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tibvary  of  t:he  theological  ^eminarp 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 


John  Stuart  Conning,  D.D. 

bm  its  .  s  /  ia/y   v.j 
Stanley,  Arthur  Penrhyn, 

1815-1881. 
The  history  of  the  Jewish 

church 


THE   HISTORY  V£ 


THE  JEWISH  CHURCH 


ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY,  D.  D. 

DEAN   OP   WESTMINSTER 


VOL.  III. 

FROM   THE   CAPTIVITY   TO   THE    CHRISTIAN   ERA 


WITH  TWO  MAPS 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1879 

[Published  by  arrangement  with  the  Author] 


RIVERSIDE,    CAMBRIDGE: 
PRINTED  BY  H.  0.   HOUGHTON  AND  COMPAHT. 


TO  THE 

BELOVED  MEMORY  OP 

THE  INSEPARABLE  PARTNER  IN 

EVERT  JOY  AND  EVERY  STRUGGLE  OF 

TWELVE  EVENTFUL  YEARS 

Siifs  Volume 

THE  SOLICITUDE  AND  SOLACE  OF  HER  LATEST  DAYB 

IS   DEDICATED 

WITH    THE    HUMBLE    PRAYER 

THAT   ITS   AIM   MAY   NOT   BE   ALTOGETHER   UNWORTHY    OF   HER 

SUSTAINING    LOVE,   HER   INSPIRING   COURAGE, 

AND    HER   NEVER-FAILING    FAITH 

IN   THE   ENLARGEMENT    OF   THE    CHURCH 

AND   THE   TRIUMPH   OF   ALL   TRUTH. 


PREFACE 


These  Lectukes,  begun  at  Oxford,  and  interrupted 
by  the  pressure  of  inevitable  engagements  in  a  more 
laborious  sphere,  have  been  resumed  during  the  leisure 
of  an  enforced  seclusion  —  under  the  impulse  of  an  en- 
couragement which  overbore  all  obstacles  —  in  the 
hope  of  finding  relief  from  an  anxiety  which  forbade  all 
external  occupations.  The  first  volume  was  dedicated, 
thirteen  years  ago,  to  a  dear  and  most  sacred  memory, 
fresh  at  the  time  and  fresh  forever.  This  last  is  bound 
up  with  another  like  memory,  if  possible,  still  nearer, 
still  more  dear,  and  no  less  enduring. 

It  had  been  my  hope  to  have  comprised  in  this  vol- 
ume the  last  stage  of.  the  Jewish  history  from  the  Cap- 
tivity to  the  final  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  so  as  to 
complete  the  cycle  contemplated  in  the  original  plan. 
Such  an  arrangement  alone  would  accord  with  the 
logical  sequence  of  the  narrative  and  with  the  due 
proportions  of  the  subject.  To  conclude  that  history 
without  embracing  the  crowning  scenes  and  charac- 
ters of  its  close  would  be  as  unjust  to  the  Jewish  race 
itself  as  it  would  be  derogatory  to  the  consummation 
which  gives  to  this  preparatory  period,  not,  indeed,  its 


V1U  PREFACE. 

only,  but  unquestionably  its  chief,  attraction.  But  it 
appeared  to  me  that  the  argument  allowed,  if  it  did 
not  invite,  a  division.  I  have,  therefore,  broken  up 
the  twenty  Lectures  which,  according  to  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  former  volumes,  would  be  due  to  this 
period,  and  have  confined  the  present  series  to  the  in- 
terval from  the  Exile  to  the  Christian  era,  leaving,  at 
least  for  the  present,  the  momentous  epoch  which  in- 
volves at  once  the  close  of  the  Jewish  Commonwealth 
and  the  birth  of  Christendom.  The  name  of  Lectures 
could  properly  be  applied  only  to  the  substance  of 
these  pages  in  the  rudimentary  form  in  which  they 
were  first  conceived,  but  it  has  been  preserved  as  most 
nearly  corresponding  to  the  framework  in  which  the 
whole  work  has  been  cast.  Their  unequal  length  has 
been  the  natural  result  of  the  disproportionate  amount 
of  materials  in  the  different  parts.1 

I.  A  few  remarks  may  be  permitted  in  explanation 
of  the  method  which  here,  as  in  the  previous  volumes, 
I  have  endeavored  to  follow. 

1.  As  before,  so  now,  but  perhaps  even  to  a  larger 
extent,  the  vast  amount  of  previous  historical  investi- 
gation precludes  the  necessity,  and  forbids  the  desire, 
of  again  discussing  questions  or  relating  facts,  which 
have  already  been  amply  treated.  The  elaborate 
Jewish  researches  of  Jost,  Herzfeld,  Gratz,  and  Sal- 
vador, the  dry  criticism  of  Kuenen,  the  brief  and  lucid 
narrative  of  Dean  Milman,  exempt  any  later   author 

1  I  have  once  more  to  express  my  obligations  to  my  friend  Mr.  Grove 
for  bis  revision  of  the  press. 


PREFACE.  IX 

from  the  duty  of  undertaking  afresh  a  labor  which  they 
have  accomplished  once  for  all,  not  to  be  repeated 
But  on  two  works  relating  to  this  period,  very  differ- 
ent from  each  other,  a  few  words  may  be  added. 

No  English  scholar,  certainly  no  English  Churchman, 
can  rightly  pass  through  the  interval  between  the  Old 
and  New  Testament  without  a  tribute  to  the  merit, 
rare  for  its  age,  of  Dean  Prideaux's  "  Connection  of 
"  Sacred  and  Profane  History."  It  has,  no  doubt,  been 
in  large  part  superseded  by  later  research  and  crit- 
icism ;  its  style  is  heavy,  and  the  management  of  the 
subject  ungainly.  But,  for  the  time  when  he  lived,  it 
shows  a  singular  amount  of  erudition ;  its  manly  and 
direct  treatment  of  the  controversies  that  he  touches 
breathes  the  true  spirit  of  the  sturdy  band  of  Anglican 
divines  to  which  he  belonged ;  the  selection  of  so  large, 
and  at  that  time  so  little  explored,  a  field,  and  the  ac- 
complishment of  so  laborious  a  task,  as  a  relief  under 
the  stress  of  severe  suffering,  indicate  both  a  grasp  of 
mind  and  an  energy  of  will  which  theological  students 
of  later  days  may  well  be  stirred  to  emulate. 

Of  altogether  another  order  is  the  volume  of  Ewald's 
History  which  covers  this  time,  and  to  which  it  is 
difficult  to  over-estimate  my  obligations.1  He,  since 
these  Lectures  were  begun,  has,  after  a  long  and  event- 
ful life,  been  called  to  his  rest.  Of  all  those  who  have 
treated  of  the  Jewish  history,  he  alone  or  almost  alone, 

1  In  the  translation  begun  by  Mr.  reader ;    and   to   this   must   now   be 

Russell  Martineau  and  continued  by  added  the  like  translation  of  the  An- 

Mr.  Estlin  Carpenter,  Ewald's  His-  tiquities    of  Israel,   by    Mr.   Henry 

lory  is  now  accessible  to  any  English  Solly. 
b 


X  PREFACE 

Beems  to  have  lived  (if  the  expression  may  be  used) 
not  outside,  but  inside,  the  sequence  of  its  events,  the 
rise  of  its  characters,  and  the  formation  of  its  litera- 
ture. Erroneous  conclusions,  unreasonable  judgments, 
unwarranted  dogmatism,  no  doubt,  may  abound ;  but 
these  do  not  interfere  with  the  light  which  he  has 
thrown,  and  the  fire  which  he  has  enkindled,  through- 
out the  passages  of  this  dark  and  intricate  labyrinth. 
By  his  removal  the  Church,  not  only  of  Germany,  but 
of  Europe,  has  lost  one  of  its  chiefest  thelogians ;  and 
his  countrymen  will  not  refuse  to  a  humble  fellow- 
worker  in  the  same  paths  the  privilege  of  paying  this 
parting  testimony  of  respect  to  one  to  whom  Chris- 
tendom owes  so  deep  a  debt.  It  is  now  more  than 
thirty  years  ago  since  I,  with  a  dear  friend,  sought  him 
out,  and  introduced  ourselves  to  him  as  young  Oxford 
students,  in  an  inn  at  Dresden ;  and  it  is  impossible  to 
forget  the  effect  produced  upon  us  by  finding  the  keen 
interest  which  this  secluded  scholar,  as  we  had  sup- 
posed, took  in  the  moral  and  social  condition  of  our 
country  ;  the  noble  enthusiasm  with  which  this  danger- 
ous heretic,  as  he  was  regarded  in  England,  grasped 
the  small  Greek  Testament  which  he  had  in  his  hand 
;i-  we  entered,  and  said  :  "  In  this  little  book  is  con- 
"  tained  all  the  wisdom  of  the  world."  We  spoke  to 
him  of  the  great  English  theologian  then  lately  de- 
parted ;  and  of  all  the  tributes  paid  to  the  memory  of 
Arnold  none  is  more  full  of  appreciation  than  that 
which  appeared  shortly  afterwards  in  the  preface  of  the 
3econd  volume  of  the  "  History  of  the  Jewish  People." 


PREFACE.  XI 

That  history  has  since  been  unfolded  piece  by  piece ; 
and  assuredly  any  one  who  has  watched  the  progress  of 
his  written  words  can  easily  understand  what  was  once 
said  of  him  to  me  by  a  German  Professor  who  had  at- 
tended his  lectures,  that  to  listen  to  him  after  the 
harsh  and  dry  instructions  of  ordinary  teachers  was 
like  passing  from  the  dust  and  turmoil  of  the  street 
into  the  depth  and  grandeur  of  an  ancient  cathedral. 

2.  Thoroughly,  however,  as  the  ground  had  been 
travelled  over  by  these  distinguished  writers,  it  seemed 
to  me  that  there  was  still  occasion,  as  in  the  former 
periods,  so  here,  to  draw  out  the  permanent  lessons 
from  a  story  which  needs,  even  more  than  the  familiar 
narratives  which  preceded  it,  to  be  pressed,  as  it  were, 
to  give  forth  its  peculiar  significance. 

One  main  cause  of  the  neglect  which  has  befallen 
this  interval  between  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament 
is  that,  especially  after  the  Macedonian  Conquest,  the 
multiplicity  of  insignificant  details  and  of  obscure  names 
has  outweighed  and  overshadowed  the  events  and 
characters  of  enduring  interest.  To  ease  the  over- 
loaded narrative  of  incidents  which  burden  the  memory 
without  feeding  the  mind;  to  disentangle  the  main 
thread  of  the  story  from  unmeaning  episodes ;  to  give 
the  most  important  conclusions  without  repeating  the 
arguments  which  have  been  elaborated  in  the  larger 
works  above  mentioned,  is  the  purpose  of  the  following 
pages.  "  Considering  "  (if  I  may  use  the  language  of 
the  author  of  the  second  book  of  Maccabees  in  regard 
to  the  work  of  Jason  of  Cyrene)  "  the  infinite  num- 


XU  PREFACE. 

"  ber  of  facts,  and  the  difficulty  which  they  find  that 
"  desire  to  look  into  the  narrations  of  the  story  for  the 
"  variety  of  the  matter,  we  have  been  careful  that 
"  they  who  will  read  may  have  delight,  and  that  they 
"  who  are  desirous  to  commit  to  memory  may  have 
"  ease,  and  that  all  into  whose  hands  this  book  comes 
*'  might  have  profit.  It  was  not  easy,  but  a  matter  of 
"  labor  and  watching,  even  as  it  is  no  ease  unto  him 
"  that  prepareth  a  banquet  and  seeketh  for  the  benefit 
"  of  others ;  yet  for  the  pleasuring  of  many  we  will 
"  undertake  gladly  this  labor,  leaving  to  others  the  ex- 
"  act  handling  of  every  particular,  endeavoring  not  to 
"  stand  on  every  point,  or  to  go  over  things  at  large, 
"  or  to  be  curious  in  particulars,  but  to  use  brevity, 
"  and  avoid  elaboration  of  the  work,  and  to  seek  fit 
"  things  for  the  adorning  thereof."  * 

There  are  some  special  branches  in  which  I  have 
adopted  this  reserve  with  less  scruple.  The  teaching 
of  the  Kabbala 2  requires  a  study  so  special  as  to  be  in- 
accessible for  one  not  called  to  explore  it ;  and  its  re- 
sults in  connection  with  the  general  moral  of  the  his- 
tory are  too  slight  to  afford  reason  for  occupying  space 
or  time  with  its  mysteries.  The  Samaritan  literature,3 
again,  is  so  completely  an  episode  that  it  was  hardly 
necessary  to  do  more  than  notice  the  few  points  of 
direct  contact  with  Judaism. 

1  2  Mace.  ii.  24-31.  8  For  the  Samaritans  see  Gciger, 

2  A  summary  of  the  Kabbala  is  Zeitschrifl  der  Morgenl.  Gesellschafl; 
given  in  Munk's  Palestine,  519-524;  xx.  527-573,  and  Jost's  History,  i. 
and  it  has  also  been  treated  at  length  44-90. 

by  Dr.  Gin>burg  in  a  separate  work 
on  the  subject. 


PREFACE.  Xlll 

The  Traditions  of  the  Talmud  might,  no  doubt,  di- 
rectly or  indirectly,  be  expected  to  illustrate  this  pe- 
riod. For  long  it  might  have  been  hoped  that  the 
gifted  Hebrew  scholar,  Emanuel  Deutsch,  would  have 
been  enabled  to  fulfil  the  promise  of  his  life  by  bring- 
ing out  of  his  treasure  all  the  things  new  and  old  of 
which  he  had  given  us  a  few  specimens  in  his  published 
essays.  This  hope  has  been  cut  short  by  his  untimely 
death.  But  there  are  two  compensations  for  the  loss 
of  a  more  independent  and  complete  knowledge  of  this 
literature.  The  first  is  the  abundant  material  furnished 
by  others  who  have  mastered  the  subject  —  by  Dr. 
Ginsburg  in  his  numerous  articles  in  Kitto's  "  Biblical 
"Cyclopaedia,"  and  in  the  Prolegomena  to  his  various 
works ;  by  Professor  Neubauer  in  his  "  Geography  of 
"  the  Talmud ;  "  by  M.  Derenbourg  in  his  "History  of 
"Palestine,"  purposely  constructed  with  the  view  of 
bringing  together  all  the  Talmudical  passages  which 
bear  on  this  portion  of  the  history.  To  these  and  to 
like  works  I  have,  for  the  most  part,  been  content  to 
refer,  not  burdening  my  pages  with  citations  from  the 
original,  unless  where  I  have  myself  consulted  it.  But, 
secondly,  the  excellent  edition  of  the  Mishna  by  Suren- 
husius  (I  venture  to  call  the  Dutch  scholar  by  his  Latin 
name)  enables  any  ordinary  reader  to  appreciate  the 
general  value  of  the  authoritative  Rabbinical  teaching 
of  this  period.  However  uncertain  must  be  the  date  of 
some  of  its  treatises,  those  which  relate  to  the  Temple, 
the  sacrifices,  and  the  sayings  of  the  great  teachers, 
uecessarily  contain  the  traditions  of  the  time  preceding 


XIV  PREFACE. 

the  Christian  era.  But  whilst  the  historical  and  anti- 
quarian references  are  often  of  profound  interest,  yet  it 
must  be  freely  admitted  that  on  the  whole,  however 
striking  these  purple  patches,  the  wearisomeness  and 
triviality  of  the  great  mass  of  its  contents  baffle  de- 
scription. And  that  this  impression  is  shared  by  Jewish 
scholars  themselves  is  evident  from  the  trenchant, 
though  covert,  irony  with  which  the  Mishna  is  intro- 
duced to  the  English  reader  by  its  modern  editors.1  As 
in  the  Jewish  Church  so  in  the  Christian  Church,  it  is 
well  known  that  vast  and  groundless  pretensions  have 
been  put  forward,  by  strange  and  fantastic  speculators, 
to  a  divine  origin  and  to  special  importance.  But  no 
historian  of  the  Christian  Church  would  now  think  it 
necessary  to  dwell  at  length  on  the  fable  of  the  Dona- 
tion of  Constantine,  or  on  the  intricate  discussions  of 
the  Seraphic  or  Angelic  doctors.  And  no  historian  of 
the  Jewish  Church  need  be  ashamed  to  pass  over  the 
fable  of  the  "  Oral  Tradition,"  or  the  casuistry  ascribed 
to  the  Masters  of  the  Rabbinical  Schools,  except  so  far 
as  they  are  needed  to  illustrate  the  undoubted  narra- 
tive or  the  important  issues  of  the  actual  history. 

3.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  repeat  what  has  been 
said  in  the  Prefaces  to  the  two  previous  volumes,  on 
the  advantage  and  the  duty  of  availing  ourselves,  as 
far  as  possible,  of  the  light  of  modern  criticism  in  the 
elucidation  of  the  sacred  books.     It  is  true  that  in  so 

1  English    translation    of   part   of  parts  which  relate  to  the  practices  of 

the  Mishna  by  De  Sola  and  Raphall.  the  Jewish  Temple  and  to  the  say- 

Introduction,    14,    iv.     It.   must    be  ings  of  the  Rabbis,  the  most  interest- 

ftdded  that,  by  the  omission  of  those  ing  parts  of  the  Mishna  are  dropped 


PREFACE.  XV 

doing  we  deviate  considerably  from  the  method  of 
interpretation  pursued  in  many  former  ages  of  the 
Church.  But  this  is  a  deviation  in  which  the  whole 
modern  world  has  shared.  When  Augustine  repeat 
edly  insists  that  the  Psalms  ascribed  in  their  titles  to 
Korah  are  descriptions  of  the  Passion,  and  that  the 
sons  of  Korah  are  Christians,  because  Korah  in  Hebrew 
and  Calvary  in  Latin  may  be  translated  "  bald  head," 
and  because  Elisha  was  derided  under  that  name ;  when 
Gregory  the  Great  sees  the  twelve  Apostles,  and  there- 
fore the  clergy,  in  the  seven  sons  of  Job,  and  the  lay 
worshippers  of  the  Trinity  in  his  three  daughters,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  feel  that  the  gulf  between  these  ex- 
travagances and  the  more  rational  explanations  of  later 
times  is  wider  than  that  which  parts  any  of  the  modern 
schools  of  theology  from  each  other.  And  it  ought  to 
be  a  matter  of  congratulation,  that  in  the  last  volume 
of  the  "Speaker's  Commentary,"  which  may  almost  be 
called  an  authorized  exposition,  suggestions x  which  a 
few  years  ago  were  regarded  from  opposing  points  of 
view  as  incompatible  with  religious  faith  are  now  taken 
for  granted,  or  treated  at  least  as  matters  for  innocent 
inquiry. 

On  some  of  the  questions  which  arise  concerning  the 
authorship  of  the  sacred  books  of  this  period  it  is  dif- 

1  I  may  specify  the  primary  refer-  editor  for   having  permitted  to  me 

ence  of  various  passages  in  the  Book  the  use  of  the  sheets  of  this  last  vol- 

of  Daniel  to  the  Maccabaean  history  ume.     I  must  also  renew  the  expres- 

(vi.    336-337),    and    the    composite  sion  of  my  gratitude  to  my  venerable 

origin  of  the  Book  of  Zechariah  (vi.  friend  Mr.  David  Morier  for  the  loan 

J>04).     I  have  to  express  my  obliga-  of  the  Bible  annotated  by  his  brother; 

lions  to  the  courtesy  of  the  learned  the  late  Persian  minister. 


XVI  PREFACE. 

ficult  to  pronounce  with  certainty.  It  is  a  temptation 
to  illuminate  the  darkness  of  the  times  succeeding  the 
Captivity  by  transferring  to  them,  with  a  distinguished 
Strasburg  scholar,  a  large l  part  of  the  Psalms.  But 
the  grounds  for  such  a  transference,  even  if  they  were 
more  solid  than  they  appear  to  be,  are  so  far  from  es- 
tablished at  present  that  it  would  be  a  needless  rash- 
ness to  attempt  it.  Instructive  as  it  would  be  to  fix 
the  dates  of  each  of  the  various  Psalms,  as  of  each 
book  in  the  Bible,  there  are  limits  beyond  which  our 
ignorance  forbids  us  to  venture,  and  within  which  we 
must  acquiesce  in  the  warning  voice  which  the  ancient 
Rabbi  was  reported  to  have  heard,  when  he  attempted 
to  rearrange  the  Psalter :  "  Arouse  not  the  Slumberer  " 
—  that  is,  "  Disturb  not  David." 

But  there  are  other  books  in  discussing  which  it  is 
allowable  to  tread  with  a  firmer  step,  where  the  sleepers 
may  rightly  be  awakened,  and  where,  when  awakened, 
they  have  twice  the  value  and  the  force  which  they 
had  when  they  were  confounded  indiscriminately  with 
their  fellow-slumberers.  The  date  of  the  composition,, 
or  at  least  of  the  publication,  of  the  latter  portion  of 
the  Prophecies  of  Isaiah  —  which  has  been  already 
treated  in  the  second 2  volume  of  these  Lectures  — 
rests  on  arguments  though  often  assailed  yet3  never 
shaken ;  and  has,  therefore,  not  been  reargued  in  the 

1  Reuss's  Commentary,  vol.  i.  47-     main  argument  is  that  drawn  from 
80.  the  peculiarities  of  language,  and  on 

2  See  note  to  Lecture  XL.  this  T  have  purposely  abstained  from 
•  Of    the    objections,    in    recent    dwelling. 

works,  the  only  one  that  touches  the 


PREFACE.  XV11 

following  pages.  The  same  problem  with  regard  to 
the  Book  of  Daniel,  though  more  complex,  demands 
at  least  to  be  regarded  as  an  open  question.1  It  must 
be  remembered  further  that  those  critics,  who  are  the 
most  determined  opponents  of  the  Babylonian  date  of 
the  Evangelical  Prophet  and  of  the  Maccaboean  date 
of  Daniel,  are  also  upholders  of  the  Pauline  origin  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  which,  by  a  large  majority 
of  scholars  in  this  country,  has  been  totally  abandoned. 
And  the  same  general  arguments  from  mere  authority 
which  may  be  used  for  attributing  the  second  portion 
of  Isaiah  to  the  age  of  Hezekiah,  and  the  Book  of 
Daniel  to  the  age  of  Cyrus,  may  also  be  pleaded  in  the 
analogous  cases  of  the  well-known  Psalms  of  the  Cap- 
tivity and  the  Alexandrian  Book  of  Wisdom,  which 
were  ascribed  respectively  to  David  and  Solomon, 
whose  authorship  of  these  sacred  writings  would  now 
be  universally  deemed  to  be  wholly  inadmissible. 

II.  Turning  from  the  framework  of  these  Lectures 
to  their  substance,  there  are  some  general  reflections 
which  are  pressed  upon  our  attention  by  the  peculiari- 
ties of  this  period. 

1.  It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  in  point  of  interest 
the  period  comprised  in  the  following  pages  falls  below 
that  of  the  two  previous  volumes  ;  much  below  that  of 
the  closing  years  of  the  history  which  follow  the  death 
of  Herod.  It  is  true  that  the  Evangelical  Prophet,  the 
Book  of  Daniel,  the  two  Books  of  Wisdom  are,  in  some 
respects,  equal,  or  even   superior,  to  the  sacred  books 

1  See  Lectures  XLIL,  XL VIII. 


XV111  PREFACE. 

of  the  earlier  epochs.  But  as  a  general  rule  we  are 
instinctively  conscious  of  a  considerable  descent  in 
Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  Esther,  in  Haggai  and  Zechariah 
even  before  we  reach  the  books  commonly  called  Apoc- 
ryphal. The  inferiority  of  style  coincides  with  the 
inferiority  of  instruction  in  the  events  and  characters, 
which  is  the  natural  result  of  the  narrowing  of  the 
course  of  religious  life  under  the  changed  circumstances 
of  the  Return.  Israel  after  the  Exile  ceased,  or  almost 
ceased,  to  be  a  nation,  and  became  only  a  church ;  and, 
becoming  only  a  church,  it  sank  at  times  to  the  level 
of  a  sect.  It  is  a  striking  example  of  that  degradation 
which,  by  an  almost  universal  law,  overtakes  Religion 
when,  even  whilst  attaining  a  purer  form,  it  loses  the 
vivifying  and  elevating  spirit  breathed  into  it  by  close 
contact  with  the  great  historic  and  secular  influences 
which  act  like  fresh  air  on  a  contracted  atmosphere, 
and  are  thus  the  Divine  antiseptics  against  the  spiritual 
corruption  of  merely  ecclesiastical  communities.  The 
one  demon  may  be  cast  out,  but  seven  other  demons 
take  possession  of  the  narrow  and  vacant  house. 

There  is,  however,  a  point  of  view,  from  which  this 
period  gives  an  encouragement  to  a  wider  and  more 
spiritual  side  of  religious  development,  such  as  in  the 
earlier  times  was  lacking.  It  is  the  time  of  "  the  Con- 
"  nection  of  Sacred  and  Profane  History,"  not  merely 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  phrase  was  used  by  divines 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  as  describing  the  depend- 
ence of  the  Jewish  people  on  foreign  powers,  but  in 
the  larger  sense    in  which  it  points  to    the  intermin- 


PREFACE.  XIX 

gling  of  the  ideas  of  foreign  nations,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  with  Judaism,  and  to  the  epoch  at  which 
the  great  teachers  of  the  Israelite  race  began  to  infuse 
into  the  main  current  of  the  world's  religion  immortal 
truths  which  it  has  never  since  lost.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  I  have  thought  it  right  to  notice,  however 
superficially,  the  contemporaneous  rise  or  revival  of  the 
three  great  sages  of  Persia,  China,  and  India.1  And 
although,  in  these  instances,  the  connection  of  the 
Eastern  philosophy  and  religion  with  the  Jewish  his- 
tory was  too  dubious  and  too  remote  to  justify  any 
large  digression,  it  seemed  to  be  necessary,  for  the 
sake  of  preserving  the  due  symmetry  of  events,  to 
devote  a  separate  lecture2  to  Socrates,  as  the  one 
Prophet  of  the  Gentile  world  whose  influence  on  the 
subsequent  course  of  the  spirit  of  mankind  has  been 
most  permanent  and  most  incontestable. 

There  are  still,  it  may  be  feared,  some  excellent  per- 
sons, to  whom  the  great  Evangelical  and  Catholic  doc- 
trine that  Divine  Truth  is  revealed  through  other  than 
Jewish  channels  is  distasteful  and  alarming.  But  in 
no  field  has  the  enlargement  of  our  theological  horizon 
been  more  apparent  than  in  the  contrast  which  distin- 
guishes the  present  mode  of  regarding  the  founders  of 
the  Gentile  religions  from  that  which  prevailed  a  cen- 
tury or  two  centuries  ago.  No  serious  writer  could 
now  think  of  applying  to  Zoroaster  the  terms  "  im- 
'  postor  "  and  "  crafty  wretch,"  which   to   Dean   Pri- 

t  Lecture  XLV.  2  Lecture  XLVI.    This  had  in  part 

appeared  in  the  Quarterly  Review. 


XX  PREFACE. 

deaux  seemed1  but  the  natural  and  inevitable  mode 
of  designating  a  heathen  teacher.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
it  is  a  consolation  to  remember  that  the  value  of  the 
truths  which  nourish  the  better  part  of  our  nature 
depends  on  their  own  intrinsic  divinity,  not  on  the 
process  by  which  they  reach  us.  The  conviction  of 
our  moral  responsibility  cannot  be  shaken  by  any  the- 
ory respecting  the  origin  of  our  remote  ancestors :  the 
authority  of  the  moral  sentiments  gains  rather  than 
loses  in  strength  by  the  reflection 2  that  they  are  the 
result  of  the  accumulated  experience  of  the  best  spirits 
of  the  human  race  ;  the  family  bond,  "  though  a  con- 
"  quest  won  by  culture  over  the  rudimentary  state  of 
"  man,  and  slowly,  precariously  acquired,  has  yet  be- 
"  come  a  sure,  solid,  and  sacred  part  of  the  constitution 
"  of  human3  nature."  In  like  manner  the  great  truths 
of  the  Unity  of  God,  of  the  Spirituality  of  Religion, 
of  the  substitution  of  Prayer  for  animal  and  vegetable 
sacrifice,  the  sense  of  a  superior  moral  beauty  or  the 
strong  detestation  of  moral  deformity  expressed  in  the 
ideas  of  the  Angelic  and  the  Diabolical,  above  all  the 
inestimable  hope  of  Immortality  —  all  existing  in  germ 
during  the  earlier  times,  but  developed  extensively  in 
(his  epoch  —  come  with  a  still  vaster  volume  of  force 
when  we  find  that  they  sprang  up  gradually,  and  that 
they  belong  not  merely  to  the  single  channel  of  the 
Jewish  Church,  but  have  floated  down  the  stream  after 

1  Prideaux,  i.  236.  8  See  the  fine  passage  in  Matthew 

2  See  Grote's  Fragments  on  Moral     Arnold's  God  and  the  Bible,  145-155. 
Subjects,  21-26. 


PREFACE.  XX] 

its  confluence  with  the  tributaries  of  Persian  and  Gre- 
cian philosophy.  "  Truth,"  it  has  been  well  said,  "  is 
"  the  property  of  no  individual,  but  is  the  treasure  of 
"  all  men.  The  nobler  the  truth  or  sentiment,  the  less 
"  imports  the  question  of  authorship."  The  larger 
and  deeper  the  historical  basis  of  our  religious  concep- 
tions, the  less  will  it  be  exposed  to  ruin  "  when  the 
"  rain  descends  and  the  floods  come  and  the  winds 
«  blow." 

2.  This  leads  us  in  conclusion  to  notice  one  more 
characteristic  of  this  period.  It  has  been  already  ob- 
served that  the  original,  and  indeed  the  only  proper, 
plan  of  this  volume  was  to  include  the  great  events 
which  are  as  certainly  the  climax  of  the  history  of  the 
Jewish  Church  as  they  are  the  beginning  of  the  history 
of  the  Christian  Church.  In  old  times  the  Jewish  his- 
torian passed  over  the  incidents  of  the  Gospel  narra- 
tives as  if  they  had  never  occured  ;  the  Jewish  pilgrim 
visited  the  Mount  of  Olives  with  no  other  remark  than 
that  it  was  the  spot  on  which  had  been  solemnized  the 
sacrifice  of  the  red  heifer.  And,  in  like  manner,  the 
Christian  historian  took  no  more  heed  of  the  influences 
of  Socrates  and  Alexander,  hardly  of  the  Maccabees 
or  the  Rabbis,  than  if  they  had  no  connection  with 
i(  the  one  far-off  Divine  event "  towards  which  the 
whole  of  this  period  was  moving,  with  the  motion  as 
of  the  rapids  towards  Niagara,  as  surely  as  the  close 
of  the  fifteenth  century  towards  the  Reformation,  or 
the  eighteenth  towards  the  French  Revolution.  But 
this  artificial  isolation  has  now  passed  away.     Not  only 


XX 11  PREFACE. 

have  serious  theologians  like  Ewald,  not  only  have 
accomplished  scholars  like  Renan,  endeavored  to  draw 
out  the  thousand  threads  by  which  Christianity  was 
connected  with  the  previous  history  of  mankind ;  but 
modern  writers  of  Jewish  extraction  have  begun  to 
acknowledge  that  "  to  leave  out  of  sight  the  rise  l  of 
"  the  Christian  Church  in  considering  the  story  of 
"  Judaism  would  be  a  sin  against  the  spirit  of  history  ; 
"  that  Christianity  declared  itself  at  its  entrance  into 
"  the  world  to  be  the  fulfilment  of  the  Jewish  Law, 
"  the  coping-stone  of  the  Jewish  religion." 

There  was  a  thoughtful  work  written  some  forty 
years  ago,  by  one  whose  genial  wisdom  I  recall  with 
grateful  pleasure,  entitled  "  Propcedia  Prophetica,"  2  or 
the  "Preparation  of  Prophecy."  The  special  argu- 
ments therein  contained  would  not,  perhaps,  now  be 
considered  by  many  as  convincing.  But,  if  the  word 
and  thought  may  be  so  applied,  the  period  between  the 
Captivity  and  the  Christian  era  might  well  be  called 
"  Propoedia  Historica,"  or  the  "  Preparation  of  His- 
"tory."  However  much  in  the  study  of  this  part  of 
the  Hebrew  story  we  may  endeavor  to  abstract  our 
minds  from  its  closing  consummation,  the  thought  of 
thai  consummation  is  the  main  source  of  the  interest 
of  every  enlightened  student,  whether  friendly  or  hos- 
tile, in  all  its  several  stages.  Whether  by  fact  or  by 
prediction,  it  is  the  "  Prseparatio  Evangelica."  What- 
ever may  have  been  the   actual   expectations  of   the 

1  Josl,  i.  894.  2  By  Dr.  Lyall,  formerly  Dean  of 

Canterbury. 


PREFACE. 


Jewish  people,  however  widely  the  anticipations  of  an 
anointed  King  or  Prophet  may  have  wavered  or  varied, 
whether  fulfilled  or  disappointed  in  Cyrus,  Zerubbabel, 
or  the  Maccabees  —  there  is  no  question  that  the 
brightest  light  which  illuminates  this  dark  period  is 
that  reflected  from  the  events  which  accompany  its 
close.  The  plain  facts  of  the  Asmonean  or  Herodian 
history  are  sufficiently  striking,  if  left  to  speak  for 
themselves.  Christian  theology  must  have  sunk  to  a 
low  ebb,  or  have  been  in  a  very  rudimentary  state, 
when  Epiphanius1  thought  that  to  disprove  the  lineal 
descent  of  Herod  from  David  was  the  best  mode  of 
answering  those  who  regarded  that  wayward  and  blood- 
stained Prince  as  the  Messiah ;  or  when  Justin,  amidst 
arguments  of  real  weight,  insisted  on2  doubtful  coin- 
cidences of  names  and  words,  which,  even  if  acknowl- 
edged, are  merely  superficial.  It  is  one  of  the  advan- 
tages of  the  study  of  this  period  that  it  fixes  the  mind 
on  the  more  solid  grounds  of  expectation  contained  in 
the  history  of  the  time,  which,  whilst  it  contains  hardly 
any  trace  of  those  artificial  combinations,  exhibits,  even 
amidst  many  and  perhaps  increasing  relapses,  that  on- 
ward march  of  events  which  is  the  true  prelude  of  the 
impending  crisis.  Just  as  in  the  history  of  Christendom 
we  are  sustained  by  the  succession  of  those  larger  and 
more  enlightened  spirits  which  even  in  the  darkest 
ages  have  never  entirely  failed,  and  have  been  the  salt 
that  has  saved  Christianity  from  the  corruption  of  its 
factions  and  its  follies,  so  in  this  period  of  the  Jewish 

1  Hcer.,  i.  20.  2  Adv.  Tryph.,  c.  97,  102,  103,  111 


XXIV  PREFACE. 

Church,  amidst  the  degeneracy  and  narrowness  of 
Priests  and  Scribes,  of  Pharisees  and  Sadducees,  there 
is  a  series  of  broader  and  loftier  souls,  beginning  with 
the  Evangelical  Prophet,  reappearing  in  the  Son  of 
Sirach  and  in  Judas  Maccabseus,  and  closing  in  the 
Book  of  Wisdom  and  the  teaching  of  Hillel  and  of 
Philo.1  These  sacred  "  Champions  of  Progress,"  though 
not  classed  with  any  of  the  contemporaneous  schools  or 
parties,  constantly  preserved  the  ideal  of  a  Spiritual 
Religion,  and,  even  within  the  strictest  circle  of  Juda- 
ism, kept  the  door  open  for  the  entrance  of  a  wider 
teaching,  and  a  deeper  thinking,  and  a  higher  living 
than  any  which  had  hitherto  been  recognized  as  Divine. 
And  the  greater  the  diversity  of  elements  which,  out- 
side the  pale  of  Judaism,  appeared  to  foreshadow  or 
contribute  towards  this  ideal,  so  much  the  larger  was 
the  horizon  which  such  a  character  would  fill,  if  ever  it 
should  appear. 

Yet  again,  if,  as  we  approach  the  decisive-  moment, 
the  scene  becomes  more  crowded  with  ordinary  per- 
sonages and  with  vulgar  display,  more  occupied  with 
the  struggles  of  Oriental  courts,  and  with  the  familiar 
machinery  of  political  controversy  and  intrigue  —  if  on 
the  soil  of  Palestine  the  vague  and  imperfect  though 
splendid  forms  of  the  earlier  Patriarchs  and  Prophets 
are  exchanged  for  the  complete  and  well-known  shapes 
of  Pompey,  and   Cassar,  and  Antony,  and  Crassus,  and 

1  To  have  included  Philo's  teach-     to  refer   to  the  Essay  on  the  subject 
;nn  in  this  Burvey  would  have  antiei-     in  Professor  Jowett's  Commentary  on 
I   too  much,  and  it  is  sufficient     St.  Paul,  i.  448-514. 


PEEFACE.  XXV 

Herod,  whose  very  words  we  possess,  whose  faces  we 
know,  whose  coins  we  have  handled  —  so  much  the 
more  clear  to  our  view  must  be  the  surroundings,  so 
much  the  more  impressive  the  appearance,  of  One  who 
shall  be  born  deep  amongst  the  circumstances  of  the 
age,  yet  shall  soar  high  above  them  all.  It  is  a  result 
of  travelling  in  Palestine  that  the  Gospel  History  pre- 
sents itself  to  the  mind  in  a  homely  fashion,  that 
seems  at  times  startling  and  almost  profane.  A  similar 
effect  is  produced  by  stumbling  upon  that  history 
when  following  the  beaten  track  of  the  narrative  of 
Josephus  and  the  disquisitions  of  the  Talmud.  But 
the  grandeur  of  the  events  becomes  not  the  less  but 
the  more  remarkable  because  of  the  commonplace  or 
degrading  atmosphere  in  which  they  are  enveloped. 

It  was  a  saying  of  Scotus  Erigena  that  whatever  is 
true  Philosophy  is  also  true  Theology.  In  like  manner 
on  a  large  scale  whatever  is  true  History  teaches  true 
Religion,  and  every  attempt  to  reproduce  the  ages 
which  immediately  preceded  or  which  accompanied  the 
advent  of  Christianity  is  a  contribution,  however  hum- 
ble, to  the  understanding  of  Christianity  itself. 

There  is  still  left  the  yet  greater  task,  in  conformity 
with  the  plan  laid  down  in  these  Lectures,  of  portray- 
ing the  historical  appearance  of  the  Founder  and  the 
first  teachers  of  Christianity  in  the  light  of  their  ac- 
knowledged, yet  often  forgotten,  connection  with  the 
long  series  of  prophets  and  heroes  of  Israel.  Much 
has  been  attempted  in  this  interesting  field  within  the 
last  few  years  in  England  by  Dean  Milman,  and  more 


XXVI  PREFACE 

recently  by  the  author  of  "  Ecce  Homo  "  and  by  Dr 
Parrar,  in  France  by  Renan  and  Pressense,  in  Germany 
by  Neander  and  Ewald ;  and  it  would  be  presumptuous 
and  needless  to  travel  once  again  in  detail  over  their 
well-worn  footsteps.  But  as  in  this  and  the  previous 
volumes  of  this  work  an  endeavor  has  been  made  to 
discard  the  temporary,  and  to  insist  on  the  permanent 
elements  of  the  earlier  Jewish  History,  so  there  may 
be  an  attempt  to  gather  up  from  the  records  of  its 
latest  stage,  and  from  the  labors  to  which  I  have  just 
referred,  the  like  lessons ;  and  these  are  of  more  tran- 
scendent value  and  need  more  urgently  to  be  empha- 
sized, in  proportion  as  the  final  stage  of  the  Jewish  na- 
tion is  also  its  grandest,  in  proportion  as  the  primal 
truths  of  Christianity  are  more  sacred,  more  spiritual, 
and  it  may  be  added,  often  more  deeply  obscured  by 
the  developments  of  subsequent  ages,  even  than  the 
primal  truths  of  Judaism. 

That  such  a  task  will  be  permitted  amidst  the  in- 
creasing shadows  and  the  multiplying  calls  of  the  years 
that  may  remain,  it  would  be  presumptuous  to  forecast. 
The  manifold  shortcomings  of  the  present  volume  are 
sufficient  warning  not  to  indulge  so  precarious  and  so 
arduous  an  expectation.  Yet  it  is  a  hope  which,  hav- 
ing its  roots  in  the  memory  of  a  past  never  to  be  for- 
gotten, may,  perchance,  carry  with  it,  in  some  shape 
its  own  fulfilment.  It  is  a  hope  founded  in  the  convic- 
tion that  the  study  of  the  highest  and  purest  elements 
of  Religion  will,  though  in  different  forms,  repay  alike 
the   patient  consideration   of  the   speculative  inquirer 


PREFACE.  XXV11 

and  the  reverential  search  for  strength  and  consolation 
amidst  the  sorrows  and  perplexities  of  life  and  of 
death.  We  are  sure  that  whatever  we  have  known  of 
good  or  great  can  never  be  wholly  taken  from  our 
possession.  We  may  trust  that  whatever  is  or  has 
been  the  best  and  greatest  is  altogether  imperishable 
and  divine. 

Deanekt,  Westminster,  May  17,  1876. 


CONTENTS. 


PiOH 

Pbeface vn 


THE   BABYLONIAN   CAPTIVITY. 

B.  C  587-536. 


LECTURE  XLI. 


THE    EXILES. 


Babylon 3 


Its  Situation 


4 


Its  Grandeur 5 

Its  Buildings 7 

Its  Social  Life 10 

Nebuchadnezzar 15 

H.  The  Jewish  Exiles 17 

Their  Writers 18 

The  Evangelical  Prophet 19 

The  Book  of  Kings 21 

The  Psalmists 21 

Their  Social  Condition 21 

The  Royal  Family 23 

The  Three  Children •        •        •  25 

Daniel 26 

III.    Results  of  the  Captivity 27 

1.  Their  Desolation 27 

The  Man  of  Sorrows 30 

2.  The  Rejection  of  Polytheism 33 

8.  The  Independence  of  Conscience 38 

4    Spirituality  of  Religion  : 

Importance  of  Prayer      .                 43 

"               Almsgiving 45 


XXX 


CONTENTS. 


rAGE 

47 


5.  The  Influence  of  Babylon 

The  Philosophy  of  History 48 

The  Union  of  East  and  West      ...  .        .     49 


LECTURE   XUI. 


THE    FALL    OF    BABYLON. 


The  End  of  Primeval  and  Beginning  of  Classical  History 

The  Persian  Invasion,  B.  c.  539  . 

Cyrus       ..... 

Belshazzar  .... 

The  Last  Night  of  Babylon     . 

The  Capture,  B.  C.  538 

The  Ruin  of  the  City 

The  Ruin  of  the  Empire 
The  Vision  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 

Note  on  the  Date  of  the  Book  of  Daniel 


THE   PERSIAN   DOMINION. 

B.  C.  538-333. 


LECTURE  XLIH. 

THE   RETURN. 

Expectation  of  the  Return 85 

National  Joy           .....••••  86 

The  Psalms 86 

The  Evangelical  Prophet         .....••  87 

The  Second  Exodus 90 

Decree  of  Cyrus,  B.  C.  536 90 

The  Partial  Character  of  the  Return 92 

The  Caravan 93 

The  Journey 96 

Appearance  of  Palestine 99 

The  Name  of  "  Juda;an  "  or  "Jew" 101 

Jerusalem 102 

Consecration  of  New  Altar 104 

Foundation  of  the  Second  Temple 106 

Mixed  Elements  of  the  Return 107 

Opposition  of  the  Samaritans         ....-••  108 

Accession  of  Darius  Hystaspis,  B.  c.  522  ...-••  109 


CONTENTS. 


XXXI 


PAOB 

Haggai  and  Zechariah .         •  110 

Joshua  the  High  Priest 114 

Zerubbabel    .....  115 

Completion  of  the  Temple,  b.  c.  516 117 

Note  on  the  Books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah      .         .         .         .         .         123 


LECTURE  XLIV. 


EZRA    AND   NEHEMIAH. 


The  New  Colony 

.     125 

Ezra,  b.  c.  459 

127 

His  Journey       ....... 

.     128 

His  Attack  on  the  Mixed  Marriages 

129 

The  Constitution       ....... 

.      133 

Nehemiah,  b.  c.  445      .                   .... 

136 

The  Rebuilding  of  the  Walls     ..... 

.      137 

Their  Dedication  ...                   ... 

142 

Meeting  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  B.  c.  445 

.      143 

Feast  of  Tabernacles 

144 

Reforms  of  Nehemiah        ...... 

.     145 

Collision  with  Neighboring  Tribes 

147 

Traditions  of  Nehemiah  and  Ezra     .... 

.      150 

Their  Position  as  Reformers  .... 

152 

"           "             Antiquaries      . 

.      154 

Nehemiah's  Library       ...... 

155 

The  Law       ........ 

159 

The  Targu mists         ....... 

.      161 

The  Scribes            ....... 

161 

.      165 

The  Rise  of  Synagogues         ..... 

167 

Note  on  the  "  Eighteen  Benedictions" 

.     168 

LECTURE   XLV. 

MALACHI    (OR   THE   CLOSE   OF    THE    PERSIAN   PERIOD).       B.  C.  480-400. 

The  Last  of  the  Prophets 1  73 

I.    The  Idea  of  the  Messenger 175 

1.  Awe  of  the  Divine  Name 178 

Ecclesiastcs 179 

Substitution  of  Adonai  for  Jehovah 180 

2.  Doctrine  of  Angels 182 


XXX11  CONTENTS. 

FAGh 

II.    The  Contrast  of  the  Ideal  and  Real 185 

Doctrine  of  the  Evil  Spirit 186 

HI.    Universality  of  the  True  Religion 188 

Story  of  Bagoses           .         .         .         . 190 

IV.    Relations  to  the  Gentile  World 191 

1.  Persian  Empire 191 

The  Book  of  Esther 192 

Its  Local  Interest 192 

Its  Religious  Interest 196 

The  Book  of  the  Dispersion 196 

Connection  with  the  Eeast  of  Purim            ....  196 

Its  General  Use 200 

2.  Influence  of  Zoroaster 202 

His  First  Appearance 204 

Revival 205 

Connection  with  Judaism 205 

3.  Influence  of  China 209 

Confucius 209 

4    Influence  of  India 210 

Buddha 211 

5.  Influence  of  Greece                  213 


THE   GRECIAN  PERIOD. 

— ♦— 

LECTURE   XLVL 

sockatks  (b.  c.  468-399). 

The  Universality  of  Socrates 218 

His  Public  Life 219 

His  Personal  Appearance 221 

His  Abstraction 223 

His  "  Dasmon  " 224 

His  Dreams 226 

I  he  Oracle 226 

His  Call 227 

His  Teaching 229 

Hi-  Fall 235 

His  Death 241 

His  Religious  Character 243 

Likeness  to  the  Gospel  History 245 

"         "        Apostolic  History 247 

Anticipations  of  a  Higher  Revelation 251 

General  Influence 252 


CONTENTS. 


XXX111 


LECTURE  XL VII. 

ALEXANDRIA    (b.  C.   333-150). 

PAGE 

Alexander  the  Great 261 

At  Babylon 263 

At  Jerusalem 264 

His  Place  in  Religious  History           .         .         .        .        .         .  267 

Foundation  of  Alexandria 269 

Greek  Cities  in  Palestine 270 

Grecian  Travellers 272 

The  Completion  of  the  Chronicles 273 

The  Sons  of  Tobiah 274 

Simon  the  Just 275 

Jewish  Colonies  in  Egypt 279 

Leontopolis 280 

The  Ptolemies 283 

The  Septuagint 284 

Its  Importance 287 

Its  Peculiarities 289 

The  Apocrypha 291 

Its  Use 293 

Ecclesiasticus 297-304 

The  "  Wisdom  of  Solomon  " 304 

The  Idea  of  Wisdom             306 

Of  Immortality           .                  308 

Aristobulus  the  Philosopher,  b.  c.  180 309 

His  Endeavor  to  Hebraize  the  Grecian  Literature     .         .         .  310 

And  to  Idealize  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 313 


LECTURE  XLVin. 


JUDAS   MACCABEUS    (b.  C.    175-163). 

Antioch 

Heliodorus,  B.  c.  180    . 
Antiochus  Ephiphanes,  b.  c.  175 
The  Grecian  Party 
Murder  of  Onias,  B.  c.  172 
Attack  on  Jerusalem 
Establishment  of  Grecian  Worship 

Desecration  of  the  Temple,  B.  c. 

Persecution 
Maccabaean  Psalms 
Psalter  of  Solomon   . 


317 

319 
320 
318,  323 
325 
326 
328 
330 
332 
334 
335 


XXXIV 


CONTENTS. 


Book  of  Daniel     . 

The  Asmonean  Family     . 

Revolt  of  Mattathias    . 

Judas  Maccabaeus 

Battle  of  Samaria 

Battle  of  Beth-horon 

Battle  of  Emmaus 

Battle  of  Beth-zur     . 

The  Dedication,  b.  c.  165     . 

Campaign  against  Edom  . 

"  "       Trans- Jordanic  Greeks 

Death  of  Antiochus 
Second  Battle  of  Beth-zur    . 
Death  of  Eleazar 
Nicanor,  b.  c.  162 

Meeting  with  Judas 
Battle  of  Beth-horon  (b.c.  161) 

Death  of  Nicanor 
Battle  of  Eleasa  (b.  c.  161) 

Death  of  Judas 
His  Career 

1.  Narrowness  of  the  Conflict 

2.  Elevation  of  Spirit    . 

3.  Patriotism 

4.  Gentile  Philosophy   . 

5.  Belief  in  Immortality     . 

Prayer  for  the  Dead 

6.  The  Maccaba?an  Canon 
Note  on  Acra  and  Mount  Zion     . 

"       the  Feast  of  the  Dedication 

"       the  Chronological  Statements  of  Daniel  ix.  24-27 


PAGE 

335 
337 
338 
341 
341 
342 
342 
344 
344 
349 
350 
352 
353 
355 
355 
355 
357 
359 
361 
362 
362 
364 
365 
369 
370 
371 
373 
377 


88! 


THE    ROMAN  PERIOD. 

B.  C.  160  TO  A.  D.  70. 


LECTURE  XLIX. 

THE   ASMONEAN   DYNASTY. 


The  Treaty  with  Rome  (b.  c.  162)   . 
The  Pontificate     .     *  . 
Alcimus,  High  Priest  (b.  c.  162) 
Jonathan  the  Asmonean  (b.  c.  161) 


390 
393 
395 
399 


CONTENTS.  XXXV 

PAGK 

Simon  the  Asmonean  (b.  c.  143) 401 

Capture  of  the  Syrian  Fortresses 403 

His  Reign 405 

John  Hyrcanusl.  (B.C.  135) 408 

Aristobulus  I.  (b.  c.  107) 410 

Alexander  Jannseus  (b.  c.  106) 411 

Alexandra  (b.  c.  79) 411 

Literature  of  the  Period  : 

Book  of  Judith 413 

Book  of  Enoch 415 

Rise  of  Religious  Parties 419 

The  Pharisees 420 

Oral  Tradition .'.......  422 

The  Sadducees 423 

TheEssenes 424 

The  Couples 425 

Joshua  and  Nittai 425 

The  Rupture  of  the  King  with  the  Pharisees  (b.  c.  109)     .        .        .426 

The  Essenian  Prophet  (B.C.  106) 428 

Persecution  of  the  Pharisees  by  Alexander  Jannseus  (b.c.  106)  .        .  429 

Alexandra  and  Simeon  the  Son  of  Shetach 431 

The  Religious  Parties 432 

Onias  the  Charmer  and  Martyr 438 


LECTURE   L. 


Pompey  the  Great  (b.  c.  63)     . 
Aristobulus  II.  and  Hyrcanus  II. 

Antipater 

Pompey 's  March  to  Jericho 

"  "         Jerusalem 

Entrance  into  the  Holy  of  Holies 

Triumph 

Foundation  of  the  Church  of  Rome 
Rise  of  Herod 

His  Character       .... 

Exploits  in  Galilee  (b.  c.  47)     . 

His  Trial       .        .         .        .        . 

Contest  with  Aristobulus  (b.  c.  42) 
The  Parthians  (b.  C  40)       . 
Herod's  Escape         .... 
King  of  the  Jews  .... 

Capture  of  Jerusalem  (b.c.  37) 


443 
444,  44  5 

445 
446 
448 
451 
454 
455 
457 
457-461 
463 
.  464 


467 
467 
468 
469 


CONTENTS 


35) 


Death  of  Antigonus 

Death  of  Aristobulus  III.  (b.  c 

Death  of  Hyrcanus  (b.  c.  30) 

Death  of  Mariamne  (b.  c.  29) 

Death  of  Alexandra  (b.  c.  28) 

End  of  the  Sons  of  Mariamne  (b.  c.  6) 

Death  of  Herod  (b.  c.  4)      . 

His  Character 

His  Public  Works  in  Palestine     . 
Rebuilding  of  the  Temple  (b.  c.  17) 

The  Outer  Court  . 

The  Inner  Court 

The  Porch     .... 

The  Sanctuary- 
Social  Life  of  Palestine 
The  Priesthood         .... 
The  Sanhedrin     .... 

The  Rabbis 

Hillel  (b.  c.  30  to  A.  D.  6)     . 

The  Essenes 

Banus 

The  Baptist      .... 
The  Synagogues  .... 

The  Peasants 

Galilee 

The  Roman  Government 

The  Expectation  of  the  Future     . 

The  Rise  of  Christianity 


PAOB 

470 
472 
474 
475 
477 
478 
480 
482 
483 
485 
488 
489 
491 
491 
492 
494 
496 
497 
499 
510 
513 
513 
515 
518 
519 
522 
524 
525 


MAPS. 

Palestine  after  the  Return 

Palestine  in  the  Greek  and  Roman  Period 


To  face  p.  85 
"      "    261 


THE   BABYLONIAN   CAPTIVITY. 

B.  C.  587-534. 


XLL  THE  EXILES. 
XLH".  THE  FALL  OF  BABYLON. 


SPECIAL   AUTHORITIES. 


I.  Biblical  Authorities  :  — 

(1)  2  Kings  xxv.  27-30. 

(2)  Isaiah  xiii. ;  xiv.  1-23  ;  xxi.  1-10  ;  xl.-lxvi. 

(3)  Jeremiah  xxix. ;  xxxiv. ;  xxxix.  11-14;  L;  li. ;  Hi. 

(4)  Lamentations  v. 

(5)  Ezekiel  xxiv.-xlviii. 

(6)  Psalms    xlii. ;     xliii. ;     xliv.  (?)  ;     lxxiv.  (?)  ;     lxxxix.  (?)  ; 

lxxix.  (?)  ;  lxxxviii.  (?)  ;  cii. ;  cxxxvii.  (In  part)  li.  18, 
19;  xiv.  6;  liii.  6;  lxix.  35,  36. 

(7)  Daniel  i.-xii.,  and  (from  the  LXX.)  the  History  of  Susanna 

in  ch.  i. ;  the  Song  of  the  Three  Children  in  ch.  iii. ;  and 
the  History  of  Bel  and  the  Dragon  in  ch.  xii.  (See  Note 
to  Lecture  XLII.) 

(8)  Tobit,  Baruch,  and  the  Epistle  of  Jeremiah,     (b.  c.  360  ?) 

II.  Jewish  Traditions  :  — 

Josephus,  Ant.,  x.  8-9,  7;  10,  11;  Ghronicon  Paschale,  p.  159 
(Fabricius  ;  Codex  Pseudep.,p.  1124)  ;  Seder  Olam,  chaps. 
28,  29. 

III.  Contemporary  Monuments  :  — 

Inscriptions  (given  in  Rawlinson's  Herodotus,  ii.  p.  585  ;  and  in 
Records  of  the  Past,  i.  131-136;  iii.  147-184;  v.  111-148). 

IV.  Heathen  Traditions  :  — 

(1)  Herodotus,  b.  c.  450;  i.  108-130,  200. 

(2)  Ctesias,  b.  c.  415  ;  in  Diod.  Sic.  ii.  8. 

(3)  Xenophon  (Cyropaedia),  B.  c.  370. 

(4)  Megasthenes,  b.  c.  300  ;  Josephus,  Ant,  x.  11,  e.  Ap.,  i.  20 

(5)  Berosus,  b.  c.  260,  in  Josephus,  Ant.,  x.  11,  c.  Ap.,  i.  19. 

(6)  Abydenus  (?).     Eusebius,  Prcep.  Ev.,  ix.  41. 

(7)  Strabo  (xvi.),  b.  c.  60-a.  d.  18. 


THE   BABYLONIAN   CAPTIVITY. 


LECTURE  XLL 

THE   EXILES. 

When  the  race  of  Israel  found  itself  in  Chaldaea,  it 
entered  once  more  on  the  great  theatre  of  the  world, 
which  it  had  quitted  on  its  Exodus  out  of  the  valley  of 
the  Nile,  and  from  which  for  a  thousand  years,  with 
the  exception1  of  the  reign  of  Solomon,  it  had  been 
secluded  among  the  hills  of  Palestine. 

I.  Unlike  Egypt,2  which  still  preserves  to  us  the 
likeness  of  the  scenes  and  sights  which  met 

Babylon. 

the  eye  of  Abraham,  Joseph,  and  Moses,  Baby- 
lon has  more  totally  disappeared  than  any  other  of  the 
great  Powers  which  once  ruled  the  earth.3  Not  a 
single  architectural  monument  —  only  one  single  sculp- 
ture —  remains  of  "  the  glory  of  the  Chaldees'  excel- 
"'  lency."  Even  the  natural  features  are  so  transformed 
as  to  be  hardly  recognizable.  But  by  a  singular  com- 
pensation its  appearance  has  been  recorded  more  ex- 
actly than  any  of  the  contemporary  capitals  with 
which   it   might    have    been  'compared.     Of  Thebes, 

1  Lecture  XXVI.  Ion,  Rawlinson's  Ancient  Monarchies 

2  Lecture  IV.  and  his  edition  of   Herodotus.     To 
8  For  the  description  of  Babylon     these  I  must  add  the  valuable  infor- 

l  refer   to    the   obvious   sources   of  mation  I  have  orally  received  from 

Herodotus  and  Ctesias  (in  Diodorus  Captain    Felix   Jones,    R.    N.,    em- 

Siculus,    ii.    8),    Rich's    Memoir  on  ployed    on   the    Survey  of  the    Eu- 

Babylon,  Ainsworth's  Researches   in  phrates  Valley. 
Assyria,  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Baby- 


4  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI. 

Memphis,  Nineveh,  Susa,  no  eye-witness  has  left  us  a 
plan  or  picture.  But  Babylon  was  seen  and  described, 
not  indeed  in  its  full  splendor,  but  still  in  its  entirety, 
by  the  most  inquisitive  traveller  of  antiquity  within 
one  century  from  the  time  when  the  Israelites  were 
within  its  walls,  and  his  accounts  are  corrected  or  con- 
firmed by  visitors  who  saw  it  yet  again  fifty  years 
later,  when  the  huge  skeleton,  though  gradually  falling 
to  pieces,  was  distinctly  visible. 

Of  all  the  seats  of  Empire  —  of  all  the  cities  that  the 
pride  or  power  of  man  has  built  on  the  surface  of  the 
globe  —  Babylon  was  the  greatest.  Its  greatness,  as  it 
was  originated,  so  in  large  measure  it  was  secured,  by 
its  situa-  its  natural  position.  Its  founders  took  advan- 
tage of  the  huge  spur  of  tertiary  rock  which 
projects  itself  from  the  long  inclined  plane  of  the 
Syrian  desert  into  the  alluvial  basin  of  Mesopotamia, 
thus  furnishing  a  dry  and  solid  platform  on  which  a 
flourishing  city  might  rest,  whilst  it  was  defended  on 
the  south  by  the  vast  morass  or  lake,  if  not  estuary, 
extending  in  that  remote  period  from  the  Persian  Gulf. 
On  this  vantage-ground  it  stood,  exactly  crossing  the 
line  of  traffic  between  the  Mediterranean  coasts  and 
the  Iranian  mountains;  just  also  on  that  point  where 
the  Euphrates,  sinking  into  a  deeper  bed,  changes  from 
a  vast  expanse  into  a  manageable  river,  not  wider  than 
the  Thames  of  our  own  metropolis  ;  where,  also,  out  of 
the  deep  rich  alluvial  clay1  it  was  easy  to  dig  the 
bricks  which  from  its  earliest  date  supplied  the  mate- 
rial for  its  immense  buildings,  cemented  by  the  bitu- 
men2 which  from  that  same  early  date  came  floating 

1  Layard,  Nineveh   and  Babylon,  "  bitumen  "    by  the  Vulgate.     See 

526,  529.  Layard,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  202- 

•  Gen.  xi.  7.     Ckemar:  the  word  208;  Herod,  i.  179. 
translated    "slime"    in  the    A..  V. : 


Lect.  XLI.  BABYLON.  0 

down  the  river  from  the  springs  in  its  upper  course. 
Babylon  was  the  greatest  of  that  class  of  cities  which 
belong  almost  exclusively  to  the  primeval  history  of 
mankind  ;  "  the  cities,"  as  they  are  called  by  Hegel,1 
'•'  of  the  river  plains,"  which  have  risen  on  the  level 
banks  of  the  mighty  streams  of  Egypt,  Mesopotamia, 
India,  and  China,  and  thus  stand  in  the  most  striking 
contrast  to  the  towns  which  belong  to  the  second  stage 
}f  human  civilization,  clustering  each  on  its  Acropolis 
or  its  Seven  Hills,  and  thus  contracted  and  concen- 
trated by  the  necessities  of  their  local  position  as  ob- 
viously as  those  older  capitals  possessed  from  their 
situation  an  illimitable  power  of  expansion.  As  of  that 
second  class  one  of  the  most  striking  examples  Its  gran. 
was  Jerusalem  on  its  mountain  fastness,  with  deur" 
the  hills  standing  round  it,  as  if  with  a  Divine  shelter, 
and  fenced  off  by  its  deep  ravines  as  by  a  natural 
fosse,2  so  of  that  earlier  class  the  most  remarkable  in- 
stance was  the  city  to  which  the  new  comers  suddenly 
found  themselves  transplanted.  Far  as  the  horizon 
itself,  extended  the  circuit  of  the  vast  capital  of  the 
then  known  world.  If  the  imperceptible  circumference 
of  our  modern  capitals  has  exceeded  the  limits  of 
Babylon,  yet  none  in  ancient  times  or  modern  can  be 
compared  with  its  definite  enclosure,  which  was  on  the 
lowest  computation  forty,  on  the  highest  sixty  miles 
round.  Like  Nineveh  or  Ecbatana,  it  was,  but  on  a 
still  larger  scale,  a  country  or  empire  enclosed  in  a 
city.  Forests,  parks,  gardens  were  intermingled  with 
the  houses  so  as  to  present  rather  the  appearance  of 
the  suburbs  of  a  great  metropolis  than  the  metropolis 
itself.  Yet  still  the  regularity  and  order  of  a  city  were 
preserved.     The  streets,  according  to  a  fashion  rare  in 

1  Philosophy  of  History,  93  2  See  Sinai  and  Palestine,  ch.  ii. 


6  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLI. 

Europe,  whether  ancient  or  modern,  but  common  in  an- 
cient Asia,1  —  and  adopted  by  the  Greek  and  Roman 
conquerors  when  they  penetrated  into  Asia,  perhaps  in 
imitation  of  Babylon,  —  were  straight,  and  at  right 
angles  to  each  other.  The  houses,  unlike  those  of 
most  ancient  cities,  except  at  Tyre,  and  afterwards  in 
Rome,  were  three  or  four  stories  high.  But  the  pro- 
digious scale  of  the  place  appeared  chiefly  in  the  enor- 
Public  mous  size,  unparalleled  before  or  since,  of  its 
buildings.  pUk]ic  buildings,  and  rendered  more  conspic- 
uous by  the  flatness  of  the  country  from  which  they 
rose.  Even  in  their  decay,  "  their  colossal  piles,  domi- 
"  neering  over  the  monotonous  plain,  produce  an  effect 
"  of  grandeur  and  magnificence  which  cannot  be  imag- 
"  ined  in  any  other  situation."  2 

The  walls  by  which  this  Imperial  city,  or,  as  it 
might  be  called,  this  Civic  Empire,  rising  out 
of  a  deep  and  wide  moat,  was  screened  and 
protected  from  the  wandering  tribes  of  the  Desert,  as 
the  Celestial  Empire  by  the  Great  Wall  of  China,  as 
the  extremities  of  the  Roman  Empire  by  the  wall  of 
Trajan  in  Dacia,  or  of  Severus  in  Northumberland, 
were  not  like  those  famous  bulwarks,  mere  mounds  or 
ramparts,  but  lines  as  of  towering  hills,  which  must 
have  met  the  distant  gaze  at  the  close  of  every  vista, 
like    the  Alban  range    at   Rome.     They  appeared,  at 

1  It  has  also  been  followed  in  the  "  cities  might  stand  in  the  walls  that 

United  States,  and  it  is  curious  to  "encompassed      Babylon."  — Pri- 

read  the  remarks  of  Dean  Pridcaux  deaux,  i.  105,  106. 

on  the  Babylonian  aspect  of  one  of  2  Ainsworth,  126.    The  Birs  Nim- 

fhe  earliest  of   the  great  American  rud,  in  its  ruins,  seemed  to  an  Eng- 

cities  then   just   founded.     "Much  lish    merchant  who  saw  it  in  1583, 

"according   to   this  model  William  "as   high  as  the  stonework  of  the 

'l'.nn,  the    Quaker,    laid    out  the  "steeple"    of  the   old    St.  Paul's 

'ground   for   his  city  of   Philadel-  (Rich,  xxxi.) 

"  phia Yet  fifty-pix  of  such 


Lect.  XLI.  BABYLON.  < 

least  to  Herodotus,  who  saw  them  whilst  in  their  un- 
broken magnificence,  not  less  than  three  hundred  feet 
high ; 1  and  along  their  summit  ran  a  vast  terrace  which 
admitted  of  the  turning  of  chariots  with  four  horses, 
and  which  may  therefore  well  have  been  more  than 
eighty  feet  broad.2 

If  to  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem,  who  were  accus- 
tomed to  the  precipitous  descent  of  the  walls  over- 
hanging the  valley  of  the  Kedron,  the  mere  height  of 
the  Babylonian  enclosure  may  not  have  seemed  so 
startling  as  to  us,  yet  to  the  size  of  the  other  buildings 
the  puny  dimensions  whether  of  the  Palace  or  Temple 
of  Solomon   bore  no  comparison.     The  Great 

.  .  .  .  .  The  palace. 

Palace  of  the  Kings  was  itself  a  city  withm  the 
city  —  seven  miles  round  ;  and  its  gardens,  expressly 
built  to  convey  to  a  Median  princess3  some  reminis- 
cence of  her  native  mountains,  rose,  one  above  another, 
to  a  height  of  more  than  seventy  feet,  on  which  stood 
forest  trees  of  vast  diameter,  side  by  side  with  flower- 
ing shrubs.  On  the  walls  of  the  palace  the  Israelites 
might  see  painted4  those  vast  hunting-scenes  which 
were  still  traceable  two  centuries  later  —  of  which  one 
characteristic  fragment  remains  in  sculpture,  a  lion 
trampling  on  a  man  —  which  would  recall  to  them  the 
description  in  their  own  early  annals  of  "  Nimrod  the 
"  mighty  hunter."  5 

But  the  most  prodigious  and  unique  of  all  was  the 
Temple  of  Bel  —  which  may  well  have  seemed 
to  them  the  completion  of  that  proud  tower 
"  whose  top  was  to  reach  to  heaven."     It  was  the  cen- 

1  This  is  nearly  the  height  of  the  8  Rawlinson's  Ancient  Monarchies 
Victoria  Tower  of  Westminster  Pal-     iii.  345,  502. 

ace  —  340  feet  high.  4  Diod.  Sic,  ii.  8. 

2  i.    e.   the    breadth    of    Victoria         5  Gen.  x.  9. 
Street,  Westminster. 


8  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

tral  point  of  .all ;  it  gave  its  name  to  the  whole  place 
—  Bab-el  or  Bab-bel,1  "  the  gate  of  God  or  Bel,"  which 
by  the  quaint  humor  of  primitive  times  had  been 
turned  to  the  Hebrew  word  "  Babel,"  or  "  confusion."  2 
It  was  the  most  remarkable  of  all  those  artificial 
mountains,  or  beacons,  which,  towering  over  the  plains 
of  Mesopotamia,3  "  guide  the  traveller's  eye  like  giant 
"  pillars."  It  rose  like  the  Great  Pyramid,  square  upon 
square  ;  and  was  believed  to  have  reached  the  height 
of  600  feet.4  Its  base  was  a  square  of  200  yards.  No 
other  edifice  consecrated  to  worship,  not  Carnac  in 
Egyptian  Thebes,  nor  Byzantine  St.  Sophia,  nor  Gothic 
Clugny,  nor  St.  Peter's  of  Rome,  have  reached  the 
grandeur  of  this  primeval  sanctuary,  casting  its 
shadow  6  far  and  wide,  over  city  and  plain.  Thither, 
as  to  the  most  sacred  and  impregnable  fortress,  were 
believed  to  have  been  transported  the  huge  brazen 
laver,  the  precious  brazen  pillars,6  and  all  the  lesser 
vessels  of  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem,  together  doubtless 
with  all  the  other  like  sacred  spoils  which  Babylonian 
conquest  had  swept  from  Egypt,  Tyre,  Damascus,  or 
Nineveh.7  And  when  from  the  silver  shrine  at  the 
summit  of  this  building,  the  whole  mass  of  mingled 
verdure  and  habitation  for  miles  and  miles  was  over- 
looked, what  was  wanting  in  grace  or  proportion  must 

1  If,  as  is  most  probable,  the  the  winding  and  not  the  pcrpendic- 
Temple  is  represented  by  the  ruins  ular  height.  If  the  perpendicular 
called  Mujcllibe,  it  still  is  called  height,  it  was  higher  than  Strasburg 
Babil  by  the  Arabs.  It  was  perhaps  Cathedral.  Sec  Rawlinson's  Ancient 
partly  confused  by  Herodotus  with  Monarchies,  iii.  343;  Grote,  Greece, 
the  Temple  of  Borsippa  (Birs-Nim-  iii.  392. 

nul).  —  Rawlinson's  Herodotus,    i.          6  Milman,  Hist,  of  Jews,  i.  417. 

821.  6  Dan.  i.  2;  2  Cbr.  xxxvi.  7;  Jose- 

2  Gen.  xi.  9.  phus,  Ant.,  x.  11,  §  1      See  Lectures 
8  Ains worth,  157.  XLIL,  XLIII. 

4  Strabo,   xvi.,  p.   738.     Perhaps         7  Rawlinson,  iii.  34  3. 


Lect.  XLI.  BABYLON.  9 

have  been  compensated  by  the  extraordinary  richness 
of  color.  Some  faint  conception  of  this  may  be  given 
by  the  view  of  Moscow  from  the  Kremlin  over  the  blue, 
green,  and  gilded  domes  and  towers  springing  from  the 
gardens  which  fill  up  the  vacant  intervals  of  that  most 
Oriental  of  European  capitals.  But  neither  that  view 
nor  any  other  can  give  a  notion  of  the  vastness  of  the 
variegated  landscape  of  Babylon  as  seen  from  any  of 
its  elevated  points. 

From  the  earliest  times  of  the  city,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  two  materials  of  its  architecture  were  the  bricks 
baked  from  the  plains  on  which.it  stood,  and  the  plas- 
ter1 fetched  from  the  bitumen  springs  of  Hit.  But 
these  homely  materials  were  made  to  yield  effects  as 
bright  and  varied  as  porcelain  or  metal.  The  several 
stages  of  the  Temple  itself  were  black,  orange,  crimson, 
gold,2  deep  yellow,  brilliant  blue,  and  silver.  The 
white  or  pale  brown  of  the  houses,  wherever  the  natu- 
ral color  of  the  bricks  was  left,  must  have  been  strik- 
ingly contrasted  with  the  rainbow  hues  with  which 
most  of  them  were  painted,  according  to  the  fancy  3  of 
their  owners,  whilst  all  the  intervening  spaces  were 
filled  with  the  variety  of  gigantic  palms 4  in  the  gar- 
dens, or  the  thick  jungles  or  luxuriant  groves  by  the 
silvery  lines  of  the  canals,  or  in  the  early  spring  the 
carpet  of  brilliant  flowers  that  covered  the  illimitable 
plain  without  the  walls,  or  the  sea  of  waving  corn,  both 
within  and  without,  which  burst  from  the  teeming  soil 
with  a  produce  so  plentiful  that  the  Grecian  traveller 
dared  not  risk  his  credit  by  stating  its  enormous  mag- 
nitude.5 

1  Rawlinson,  iii.  385.  4  Layard,  Nineveh   and  Babylon, 

2  Rawlinson,    iii.  382-385.     Lay-     485. 

drd,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  517.  6  See  Herod,  i.  193,  with  Rawlin- 

8  Rawlinson,  iii.  342.  son's  notes.    Compare  Grote,  iii.  395 

9 


10  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLI. 

But  when  from  the  outward  show  we  descend  to  the 
inner  life  of  the  place,  Babylon  may  well  in- 
ciety'  deed  to  the  secluded  Israelite  have  seemed 
to  be  that  of  which  to  all  subsequent  ages  it  has  been 
taken  as  the  type  —  "  the  "World  "  itself.  No  doubt 
there  was  in  Jerusalem  and  Samaria,  especially  since 
the  days  of  Solomon,  a  little  hierarchy  and  aristocracy 
and  court,  with  its  factions,  feasts,  and  fashions.  But 
nowhere  else  in  Asia,  hardly  even  in  Egypt,  could  have 
been  seen  the  magnificent  cavalry  careering  through 
the  streets,  the  chariots  and  four,  "  chariots  like  whirl- 
"  winds,"  "  horses  swifter  than  eagles,"  — "  horses,  and 
chariots,  and  horsemen,  and  companies,"  with  "  spears  " 
and  "  burnished  helmets."  1  Nowhere  else  could  have 
been  imagined  the  long  muster-roll,  as  of  a  peerage 
that  passes  in  long  procession  before  the  eye  of  the 
Israelite  captive  —  "  the  satraps,  captains,  pachas,  the 
"  chief  judges,  treasurers,  judges,  counsellors,2  and  all 
"  the  rulers  of  the  provinces."  Their  splendid  costumes 
of  scarlet — their  variegated3  sashes  —  "all  of  them 
"  princes  to  look  to  ;  "  their  elaborate  armor  —  "  buck- 
"  ler,  and  shield,  and  helmet "  —  their  breastplates,4 
their  bows  and  quivers,  and  battle-axes,  marked  out  to 
every  eye  the  power  and  grandeur  of  the  army.  No- 
where was  science  or  art  so  visibly  exalted,  as 
in  "  the  magicians,  and  the  astrologers,  and 
"  the  sorcerers,  and  the  wise  Chaldaeans," 5  who  were 
expected  to  unravel  all  the  secrets  of  nature,  and  who  in 
point  of  fact  from  those  wide  level  plains,  "  where  the 
"  entire  celestial  hemisphere  is  continually  visible  to 
"every  eye,  and  where  the  clear  transparent  atmos- 

1  Ezek.  xxvi.   7;  Jer.  iv.  13,  29;  »  Ezek.  xxiii.  14,  15;  ib.  24. 

?i.  28;  xlvi.  4;  1.  37.     (Rawlinson's  *  Jer.  li.  3;  Ezek.  xxvi.  9. 

Ancient  Monarchies,  iii.  439.)  8  Dan.  ii.  2,  iv.  6,  7. 

8  Dan.  iii.  2,  3,  27  (Heb.). 


Lect.  XLI.  BABYLON.  11 

"  phere  shows  night  after  night  the  heavens  gemmed 
•*  with  countless  stars  of  undimmed  brilliancy,"  1  had 
laid  the  first  foundations  of  astronomy,  mingled  as  it  was 
with  the  speculations,  then  deemed  as  of  yet  deeper  sig- 
nificance, of  astrology.  Far  in  advance  of  the  philoso- 
phy, as  yet  unborn,  of  Greece,  in  advance  even  of  the 
ancient  philosophy  of  Egypt,2  the  ChaldaBans  long  rep- 
resented to  both  those  nations  the  highest  flights  of 
human  intellect  —  even  as  the  majestic  temples,  which 
served  to  them  at  once  as  college  and  observatory, 
towered  above  the  buildings  of  the  then  known  world. 
Twice  over  in  the  Biblical  history  —  once  on  the 
heights  of  Zophim,  once  beside  the  cradle  of  Beth- 
lehem —  do  the  star-gazers  of  Chaldaea 3  lay  claim  to  be 
at  once  the  precursors  of  Divine  Revelation,  and  the 
representatives  of  superhuman  science. 

Returning  to  the  ordinary  life  of  the  place,  its  gay 
scenes  of  luxury  and  pomp  were  stamped  on 

1        .  Its  music. 

the  memory  of  the  Israelites  by  the  constant 
clash  and  concert,4  again  and  again  resounding,  of  the 
musical  instruments  in  which  the  Babylonians  delighted, 
and  of  which  the  mingled  Greek  and  Asiatic  names  are 
faintly  indicated  by  the  English  catalogue  of  "  cornet, 
"  flute,  harp,  sackbut,  psaltery,  dulcimer,  and  all  kinds 
of  music."6  Nor  could  they  forget  how,  like  the 
Athenian  exiles  in  later  days  at  Syracuse,  their  artisti- 
cal  masters  besought  them  to  take  their  own  harps  and 
sing  one  of  the  songs  of  their  distant  mountain  city ; 6 
though,  unlike  those  prisoners,  who  gladly  recited  to 

1  Rawlinson,  iii.  415.  ■*   For    the    Babylonian    love    of. 

2  Grote's  Hist,  of  Greece,  iii.  392.     music,  see  Rawlinson,  iiL  451. 

3  Num.   xxii.    1;   xxiv.  17;   Matt.         5  Dan.  iii.  5,  7,  15. 

i.  1.     See  an  ingenious  though  fan-         6  Psalm  cxxxvi.  1,  2. 
jiful  book  by  Dr.  Francis  Upham, 
Who  were  the  Wise  Men  f 


12  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI. 

their  kindred  enemies  the  tragedies  of  their  own  Eurip- 
ides, they  could  not  bring  themselves  to  waste  on  that 
foreign  land  the  melody  which  belonged  only  to  their 
Divine  Master.  Yet  one  more  feature  peculiar  to 
Chaldaea,  both  natural  and  social,  is  recalled  by  the 
scene  of  that  touching  dialogue  between  the  captors 
and  the  captives.  The  trees  on  which  their  harps  were 
hung  were  unlike  any  that  they  knew  in  their  own 
country.  They  called  them  by  the  name  which  seemed 
nearest  to  the  willows  of  their  own  water-courses.  But 
they  were  in  fact  the  branching  poplars1  mingled  with 
the  tamarisks,  which  still  cluster  beside  the  streams  of 
Mesopotamia,  and  of  which  one  solitary  and  venerable 
specimen 2  long  survived  on  the  ruins  of  Babylon,  and 
in  the  gentle  waving  of  its  green  boughs  sent  forth  a 
melancholy  rustling  sound,  such  as  in  after  times 
chimed  in  with  the  universal  desolation  of  the  spot, 
such  as  in  the  ears  of  the  Israelites  might  have  seemed 
to  echo  their  own  mournful  thoughts.  The  "  waters  " 
by  which  they  wept  were  "  the  rivers  of  Baby- 
lon." "  The  river  "  —  that  word  was  of  un- 
known or  almost  unknown  sound  to  those  who  had 
seen  only  the  scanty  torrent  beds  of  Judcea,  or  the  nar- 

1  The  weeping  willow  to  which  preserved  from  the  destruction  of 
from  this  passage  Linnaeus  gave  the  Babylon,  in  order,  in  long  subse- 
name  of  Salix  Babylonica  is  not  quent  ages,  to  offer  to  Ali,  the 
found  in  Babylonia.  "  The  weeping  Prophet's  son-in-law,  a  place  to  tie 
"  willow  is  indigenous  in  China  and  up  his  horse  after  the  Battle  of  Hil- 
"  Japan,  cultivated  in  Europe,  but  lab  (Rich,  67;  Layard,  507).  What 
''is  neither  indigenous  nor  culti-  tree  on  earth  has  a  more  poetic  story 
>4vated  in  Babylonia.  —  (Koch's  than  this?  I  grieve  to  see  since 
Dendrologie,  ii.  507.)  It  may  be  writing  this  that  in  these  latest  days 
either  the  tamarisk  (tattle)  or  the  pop-  the  depredations  of  travellers  and 
lar  (Populus  Euphratica),  to  which  pilgrims  have  reduced  this  venerable 
the  Arabs  still  give  the  name  of  ereb,  relic  to  a  mere  trunk  (Assyrian  Dis- 
the  word  used  in  this  Psalm.  coveries,  by   Mr.   George   Smith,    p 

2  It  is  by  tradition  the  single  tree  56), 


Lbct.  XLI.  BABYLON.  13 

row  rapids  of  the  Jordan.  The  "  river"  in  the  mouth 
of  an  Israelite  meant  almost  always  the  gigantic 
Euphrates1  —  "  the  fourth  river"  of  the  primeval  gar- 
den of  the  earth  —  the  boundary  of  waters,2  from  be- 
yond which  their  forefathers  had  come.  And  now, 
after  parting  from  it  for  many  centuries,  they  once 
more  found  themselves  on  its  banks  —  not  one  river 
only,  but  literally,  as  the  Psalmist  calls  it,  "  rivers ; " 
for  by  the  wonderful  system  of  irrigation  which  was  the 
life  of  the  whole  region  it  was  diverted  into  separate 
canals,  each  of  which  was  itself  "  a  river,"  the  source 
and  support  of  the  gardens  and  palaces  which  clustered 
along  the  water's  edge.  The  country  far  and  near  was 
intersected  with  these  branches  of  the  mighty  stream. 
One  of  them  was  so  vast  as  to  bear  then  the  name,  which 
it  bears  even  to  this  day,  of  the  Egyptian  Nile.3 

On  the  banks  of  the  main  channel  of  the  "  river " 
all  the  streets4  abutted,  all  the  gates  opened  ;  and  im- 
mediately on  leaving  the  city  it  opened  into  that  vast 
lake  or  estuary  which  made  the  surrounding  tract  itself 
"the  desert 5  of  the  sea"  —  the  great  sea,6  tossed  by 
the  four  winds  of  heaven,  and  teeming  with  the  mon- 
ster shapes  of  earth  —  the  sea  on  which  floated  innu- 
merable ships  or  boats,  as  the  junks  at  Pekin,  or  the 
gondolas  at  Venice,  or  even  as  the  vast  shipping  at  our 
own  renowned  seaports.  "  Of  the  great  waters,"  such 
is  the  monumental   inscription  7  of  Nebuchadnezzar  — 

1  Sinai  and  Palestine,  Appendix,     is  a  retention  of  local  color  in  the 
§  34.  Book  of   Daniel  which  has  escaped 

2  See  Lecture  I.  p.  10.  •        even    the   vigilant  research   of   Dr. 
8  The  word  lor,  in  Dan.  xii.  5,  is     Pusey. 

elsewhere   only  used    for   the   Nile.         4  Rawlinson,  iii.  342. 

Sinai  and  Palestine,  Appendix,  §  35.         5  Isa.  xxi.  1. 

There  is  a  canal  to  this  day  called        6  Dan.  vii.  2,  3. 

"the  Nile"  (Bahr-el-Nil)  between        7  Rawlinson's  Herod.,  vol.  iii.  p. 

the  Euphrates  and  the  Tigris.    This  586. 


14  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

"  like  the  waters  of  the  ocean,  I  made  use  abundantly . 
"  Their  depths  were  like  the  depths  of  the  vast  ocean." 
The  inland  city  was  thus  converted  into  a  "  city  of 
"merchants"  —  the  magnificent  empire  into  a  "  land  of 
"  traffic."  "  The  cry,"  the  stir,  the  gayety  of  the  Chal- 
daeans  was  not  in  the  streets  or  gardens  of  Babylon, 
but  "in  their  ships."1  Down  the  Euphrates  came  float- 
ing from  the  bitumen  pits  of  Hit  the  cement  with  which 
its  foundations  were  covered,2  and  from  Kurdistan  and 
Armenia  huge  blocks  of  basalt,  from  Phoenicia  gems 
and  wine,  perhaps  its  tin  from  Cornwall ;  up  its  course 
came  from  Arabia  and  from  India  the  dogs  for  their 
sports,  the  costly  wood  for  their  stately  walking-staves, 
the  frankincense  for  their  worship.3  When  in  far  later 
days  the  name  of  Babylon  was  transferred  to  the  West 
to  indicate  the  Imperial  city  which  had  taken  its  place 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Jewish  exiles  of  that  time,  the  recol- 
lection of  the  traffic  of  the  Euphrates  had  lived  on  with 
so  fresh  a  memory  that  this  characteristic  feature  of  the 
Mesopotamian  city  was  transplanted  to  its  Italian  sub- 
stitute, Rome.  Nothing  could  be  less  applicable  to  the 
inland  capital  on  the  banks  of  the  narrow  Tiber ;  but 
so  deeply  had  this  imagery  of  the  ancient  Babylon  be- 
come a  part  of  the  idea  of  secular  grandeur  that  it  was 
transferred  to  that  new  representative  of  the  world 
without  a  shock.  "  The  merchandise  of  gold,  and  silver, 
"  and  precious  stones,  and  of  pearls,  and  fine  linen,  and 
■"  purple,  and  silk,  and  scarlet,  and  all  wood  of  incense. 
"  and  all  manner  of  vessels  of  ivory,  and  all  manner  of 
"  vessels  of  most  precious  wood,  and  of  brass,  and  of 
"  iron,  and  marble,  and  cinnamon,  and  odors,  and  oint- 
"  ments,  and  frankincense,  and  wine,  and  oil,  and  fine 

1  Isa.  xliii.  14  (Heb.).  8  Layard,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  L 

'  Rawlinson,  Monarchies,  iii.  441.     526. 


Lbct.  XLI.  BABYLON.  15 

''  flour,  and  wheat,  and  beasts,  and  sheep,  and  horses, 
"  and  chariots,  and  slaves,  and  souls  of  men ;  the  ship- 
"  masters,  and  all  the  company  in  ships,  and  sailors, 
"  and  as  many  as  trade  by  sea,  and  the  craftsmen,  and 
"  the  merchants  who  were  the  great  men  of  the 
"  earth."  1 

And  over  this  vast  world  of  power,  splendor,  science, 
art,  and  commerce,  presided  a  genius  worthy  of  it  (so 
at  least  the  Israelite  tradition  represented  him)  —  "  the 
"  Head  of  Gold,"  —  "  whose  brightness  was  ex-  Nebuchad. 
"  cellent  "  —  the  Tree  whose  height  reached  to  nezzar- 
heaven,  and  the  sight  thereof  "  to  the  end  of  all  the 
"  earth  "  —  "  whose  leaves  were  fair,  and  the  fruit 
"  thereof  much,  and  in  it  meat  for  all  —  under  which 
"the  beasts  of  the  field  dwelt,  and  upon  whose 
"  branches  the  fowls  of  the  air  had  their  habitation." 2 
He  whose  reign  reached  over  one  half  of  the  whole 
period  of  the  Empire3  —  he  who  was  the  last  conqueror 
amongst  the  primeval  monarchies,  as  Nimrod  had  been 
the  first  —  the  Lord  of  the  then  known  historical  world 
from  Greece  to  India  —  was  the  favorite  of  Nebo  who 
when  he  looked  on  his  vast  constructions  4  might  truly 
say,  "  Is  not  this  Great  Babylon  that  I  have  built  for 
"  the  house  of  my  kingdom,  by  the  might  of  my  power, 
"  and  for  the  honor  of  my  majesty  ?  "  6 

"  Hardly  any  other  name  than  Nebuchadnezzar's  is 
''found  on  the  bricks6  of  Babylon."  Palace  and  Tem- 
ple were  both  rebuilt  by  him ;  and  not  only  in  Babylon 
but  throughout  the  country.     The  representations  of 

1  Rev.  xviii.  11,  12,  13,  17,  23.  6  Dan.  iv.  30.    Comp.  the  Inscrip- 

2  Dan.  iv.  20,  21,  38.  tion  in  Records  of  the  Past,  v.  119- 
8  Rawlinson,  iii.  489.     Dr.  Pusey-,     135. 

p.  119.  6  Rawlinson,  Monarchies,  iii.  498. 

4  Nebo-kudurri-ussuf ,  i.  e.,  '  •  May 
*Nebo  protect  the  crown." 


16  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLL 

him  in  the  Book  of  Daniel  may  belong  to  a  later 
epoch  ;  but  they  agree  in  their  general  outline  with 
the  few  fragments  preserved  to  us  of  ancient  annals  or 
inscriptions  ;  and  they  have  a  peculiar  interest  of  their 
own,  from  the  fact  that  the  combination  which  they 
exhibit  of  savage  power  with  bursts  of  devotion  and 
tenderness  are  not  found  elsewhere  amongst  the  He- 
brew portraitures  of  any  Gentile  potentate.  It  is  at 
once  loftier  and  more  generous  than  their  conception 
of  the  Egyptian  Pharaoh,  the  Assyrian  Sennacherib,  or 
the  Greek  Antiochus  ;  it  is  wilder  and  fiercer  than  the 
adumbrations  of  the  Persian  Cyrus  or  the  Roman  Caesar. 
His  decrees  as  recorded  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
may  breathe  a  more  didactic  spirit  than  they  actually 
bore  ;  but  they  are  not  unlike  in  tone  to  those  which 
are  preserved  on  the  monuments.  And  the  story  of 
his  insanity,  even  if  the  momentary  light  thrown  upon 
it  by  the  alleged1  interpretation  of  the  inscriptions 
be  withdrawn,  may  remain  as  the  Hebrew  version  of 
the  sickness  described  by  Berosus  and  the  sudden  dis- 
appearance described  by  Abyclenus,2  and  also  as  the 
profound  Biblical  expression  of  "  the  Vanity  of  Human 
"  Wishes  "  8 —  the  punishment  of  the  "  vaulting  ambi- 
"tion  that  overleaps  itself"  —  the  eclipse  and  there- 
turn  of  reason,  which  when  witnessed  even  in  modern 
times  in  the  highest  places  of  the  State  have  moved 
the  heart  of  a  whole  nation  to  sympathy  or  to  thanks- 
giving. He  was  to  the  Israelite  captives,  not  merely 
a  gigantic  tyrant  but  with  something  like  "the  pro- 

1  The  interpretation  of  the  nega-  8  The  possibility  of  such  a  malady 
tive  clauses  of  the  Inscription,  as  as  that  described  in  Dan.  iv.  33-36 
given,  Rawlinson's  Herodotus,  ii.  is  established  with  interesting  illus- 
686.  trations  Id    Dr.  Pusey's  Daniel   the 

2  Josephus,   c.  Ap.,  i.   20;   Eus.,     Prophet,  pp.  426-433. 
Prozp.  Ev.,  ix.  41. 


Lect.  XLL  BABYLON.  17 

"phetic  soul  of  the  wide  world,  dreaming  on  things 
"to  come"1 — himself  the  devoted  worshipper  of  his 
own 2  Merodach,  yet  bowing  before  the  King  of  Heav- 
"  en,  whose  works  are  truth,  and  whose  ways  judg- 
"  ment." 3 

II.  Into  "  this  golden  city,"  underneath  this  magnifi- 
cent oppressor,  the  little  band  of  Israelites  The  Cap. 
were  transported  for  the  period  which  is tmty' 
known  by  the  name  of  the  Babylonian  Captivity.  It 
might  at  first  sight  seem  that  it  was  a  period  of  which 
the  records  are  few,  and  of  which  the  results  were 
scanty.  It  lasted  for  little  more  than  a  single  genera- 
tion.4 But  it  sowed  the  seeds  of  a  change  deeper  than 
any  that  had  occurred  since  the  destruction  of  the  sanc- 
tuary at  Shiloh,  almost  than  any  that  had  occurred 
since  the  Exodus. 

The  number  of  exiles  was  comparatively  small.  A 
large  part  of  the  lower  classes  were  left  in  Palestine, 
and  those  who  were  transported  consisted  chiefly  of  the 
princes,  nobles,  and  priests,  with  the  addition  of  arti- 
sans in  wood  and  iron.  But  still  it  was  the  kernel 5  — 
the  flower  —  what  the  older  Prophets  would  have 
called  "  the  remnant,"  the  sufficient  remnant  of  the 
nation. 

We  have  already  spoken  of  the  other  fragments  of 
the  Captivity  —  the  colony  of  the  Ten  Tribes  in  the 
remote  provinces  of  the  Assyrian  Empire  • 6  the  first 

1  Dan.  ii.  31;  iv.  5;  and  see  Aby-  computed,  they  must  be  reckoned 
denus,  in  Eus.,  Prcep.  Ev.,  ix.  41.         from  b.  c.  606  to  536.     But  the  real 

2  Rawlinson,  Monarchies,  iii.  459.      Captivity  was  only  from  587  to  536, 
8  Dan.  iv.  37.  i.  e.,  51  years. 

4  The  seventy  years  foretold   by  6  For  this  whole  question  of  the 

Jeremiah  must  be  considered  as  a  numbers,  see  Kuenen,  History  of  th» 

round  number,  expressing  that  before  Religion  of  Israel,  vol.  ii.,  note  C. 

two  generations  had  passed  the  de-  6  See  Lecture  XXXIV. 
dverance  would   come.     If  literally 
3 


18  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLL 

beginnings l  of  the  colony  in  Egypt,  ultimately  destined 
to  attain  such  significance. 

The  two  remaining  groups  of  exiles  from  the  king- 
dom of  Judah,  those  under  Jehoiachin,  and  those  under 
Zedekiah,  must  have  soon  blended  together ;  and  con- 
taining as  they  did  within  themselves  all  the  various 
elements  of  society,  they  enable  us,  partly  through  the 
writings  and  partly  through  the  actions  of  the  little 
community,  to  form  an  idea,  fragmentary,  indeed,  but 
still  sufficient,  of  the  effects  of  the  Captivity.  As  be- 
fore we  saw  the  main  results2  of  "Israel  in  Egypt," 
so  now  we  enter  on  the  characteristics  of  Israel  in 
Babylon. 

With  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  the  public  life  of  the  peo- 
Literary  pie  had  disappeared.  The  Prophets  could  no 
character.  ionger  stand  in  the  Temple  courts  or  on  the 
cliffs  of  Carmel  to  warn  by  word  of  mouth  or  para- 
bolical gesture.  "  The  law  was  no  more.  The  Proph- 
"ets3  found  no  vision  from  the  Eternal." 

There  is  one  common  feature,  however,  which  runs 
through  all  the  writings  of  this  period,  which  served 
as  a  compensation  for  the  loss  of  the  living  faces  and 
living  words  of  the  ancient  seers.  Now  began  the 
practice  of  committing  to  writing,  of  compiling,  of 
epistolary  correspondence,  which  (with  two  or  three 
great  exceptions)  continued  during  the  five  coming 
centuries  of  Jewish  History.  "  Never  before 4  had  lit- 
"  erature  possessed  so  profound  a  significance  for  Israel 
"  or  rendered  such  convenient  service  as  at  thisjunc- 
«  tare" 

The  aged  Jeremiah  still  lived  on  in  Egypt,6  far  away 

1  Lectures  XL.,  XLVTT.  4  Ewald,  v.  10. 

3  Lecture  IV.  6  See  Lecture  XL. 

8  Lam.  ii.  10;  Ezek.  vii.  36. 


Lect.  XLI. 


THE  WRITERS.  19 


from  the  mass  of  his  people.     But  already  his  proph- 
ecies had  begun  to  take  the  form  of  a  book ; 

°  .  .  ,     Jsremiah. 

already  he  had  thrown  his  warnings  and  med- 
itations into  the  form  of  a  letter  to  the  exiles  of  the 
first  stage  of   the  Captivity,  which  was  the  first  ex- 
ample of  religious  instruction  so  conveyed,  which  was 
followed  up,  we    know  not  when,  by  the    apocryphal 
letter  bearing  his  name,  and  which  ultimately  issued 
in  the  Apostolic  Epistles  of  the  New  Testament.     The 
same  tendency  is  seen  in  the  rigidly  artificial  and  elab- 
orate framework *  in  which  even  the  passionate  elegy 
of  the  Lamentations  is  composed,  in  contrast  with  the 
free  rhythm  of  the  earlier   songs  of  the  Davidic  age. 
Already  the  Prophecies  of  Ezekiel 2  had  been 
arranged  in  the  permanent  chronological  form 
which  they  have  since  worn.     "  Baruch  the  scribe  " 
had  inaugurated  this  new  era,  the  first  of  his 

°  .    .  .1  -,     Baruch. 

class,  by  transcribing  and  arranging  the  words 
of  Jeremiah ;  had  already,  according  to  Jewish  tradi- 
tion, read  to  the  exiles  in  Babylon  itself,  to  the  cap- 
tive king,  and  princes,  and  nobles,  and  elders,  and 
"  all  the  people  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,"  of 
those  that  dwelt  by  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Euphra- 
tes,3 the  book  of  his  warnings  and  consolations. 

Are  we  to  conjecture  that  something  of  this  famous 
scribe 4  may  be  traced  in  the  Prophet  who  The  second 
poured  forth  during  this  period  of  expecta- 
tion the  noblest  of  all  the  prophetic  strains  of  Israel  — 
noblest  and  freest  in  spirit,  but  in  form  following  that 
regular  flow  and  continuous  unity  which  in  his  age,  as 

1  Each  part  is  arranged  alphabeti-        8  "  Sud"   an    Arabic    name    for 
\ally.  Euphrates.     Baruch  i.  4. 

3  See  Lecture  XL.  4  See  the  conjecture  in  Bunsen's 

God  in  History,  i.  131. 


20  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLL 

has  been  said,  superseded  the  disjointed  and  successive 
utterances  of  the  older  seers  ? *  Or  is  it  possible  that 
in  the  author  of  that  strain  of  which  the  burden  is  the 
suffering  and  the  exaltation  of  the  Servant  of  the  Lord 
we  have  that  mysterious  prophet  registered  in  ancient 
catalogues  as  Abdadonai,2  "  the  Servant  of  the  Lord," 
himself  the  personification  of  the  subject  of  his  book  ? 
Whether  Baruch  or  Abdadonai  —  whether  in  Chaldsea, 
Palestine,  or  Egypt  —  whether  another  Isaiah,  in  more 
than  the  power  and  spirit  of  the  old  Isaiah  —  or 
whether,  as  some  would  prefer  to  think,  that  older 
Isaiah,  transported  by  a  magical  influence  into  a  gene- 
ration not  his  own  —  the  Great  Unnamed,  the  Evangel- 
ical Prophet,  is  our  chief  guide  through  this  dark 
period  of  transition,  illuminating  it  with  flashes  of  light, 
not  the  less  bright  because  we  know  not  whence  they 
come.  In  his  glorious  roll  of  consolations,  warnings, 
aspirations,  we  have,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  the 
very  highest  flight  of  Hebrew  prophecy.  Nothing 
finer  had  been  heard  even  from  the  lips  of  the  son  of 
Amos.  No  other  strain  is  so  constantly  taken3  up 
again  in  the  last  and  greatest  days  of  Hebrew  teach- 
ing. In  the  splendor  of  its  imagery  and  the  nerve  of 
its  poetry  —  nothing,  even  in  those  last  days  of  Evan- 
gelist or  Apostle,  exceeds  or  equals  it. 

Yet  once  more,  in  the  enforced  leisure  of  captivity 
and  exile,  like  many  a  one  in  later  days  —  Thucydides, 
Raleigh,  Clarendon  —  now  in  the  agony  of  the  disper- 
sion, in  the  natural  fear  lest  the  relict  of  their  ancient 

1  For   the  whole  question  of   the  2  Clem.  Alex.  (Strom,  i.  21).    (See 

position   of    the    second   Isaiah,  see  Note  to  Lecture  XX.) 

Lecture    XL.       Compare     Ewald's  8  There  are  twenty-one  quotations 

Prophets,  ii.  404-487.     Matthew  Ar-  in  the  New  Testament  from  Isaiah 

lold,  The  Great  Prophecy  of  Israel's  xl.-lxvi.,  against  thirteen  from  the 

Restoration,  Cheyne's  Book  of  Isaiah,  earlier  chapters. 


Lect.  xli.  the  writees.  21 

literature  should  be  lost  through  the  confusion  of  the 
time,  began  those  laborious  compilations }  of  the  An- 
nals of  the  past  which  issued  at  last  in  "  the  Canon  of 
the  Old  Testament,"  of  which  perhaps  several  might 
be  traced  to  this  epoch,  but  of  which  it  will  be  sufficient 
to  specify  the  most  undoubted  instance  —  the  Book  of 
the  Kings.  It  is  touching  to  observe  from  its  The  Book 
abrupt  conclusion  how  this  nameless  student of  Kings 
continued  his  work  to  the  precise  moment 2  when  he 
was  delighted  to  leave  his  readers  in  the  midst  of  his 
sorrows  with  that  one  gleam  which  was  shed  over  the 
darkness  of  their  nation  by  the  kindly  treatment  of 
the  last  royal  descendant  of  David  in  the  Court  of 
Babylon. 

There  were  also  the  company  of  minstrels  and  musi- 
cians, male  and  female,3  who  kept  up  the  tra-  The  min_ 
clitions  of  the  music  of  David  and  Asaph. strels- 
Their  resort,  as  we  have  seen,  was  by  the  long  canals, 
where  they  still  wandered  with  their  native  harps;4 
and  though  they  refused  to  gratify  the  demands  of 
their  conquerors,  they  poured  forth,  we  cannot  doubt, 
some  of  those  plaintive  strains  which  can  be  placed  at 
no  date  so  suitable  as  this,  or  else  worked  up  into  ac- 
cord with  the  circumstances  of  their  time  some  of 
those  which  had  been  handed  down  from  earlier  and 
happier  days. 

From  the  writers  we  turn  to  the  actors  in  the  scenes. 
The  Greek  word   by  which   the  Captivity  is 

The  social 

called  —  ueroixeaia,6  migration   or  transporta-  condition  of 

i  l  -n  «      i  the  Exiles' 

tion  —  aptly  expresses  the  milder  aspect  01  the 
condition  of  the  great  mass  of  the  exiles.     Just  as  the 

1  Ewald,  v.  18.  4  Ps.  cxxxvii.  1,  2. 

2  2  Kings  xxv.  27-30.  6  Also  anoxia. 
8  Ezra  ii.  65. 


22  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLL 

Greeks,  transported  in  like  manner  by  Darius  Hystaspes 
into  the  heart  of  Asia,  remained  long  afterwards  peace- 
able settlers  under  the  Persian  rule,  so  at  the  time  and 
for  centuries  afterward  did  many  of  the  Jewish  exiles 
establish  themselves  in  Chaldcea.  Babylon  from  this 
time  forth  became,  even  after  the  return,  even  after 
the  powerful  settlement  of  the  Jews  at  Alexandria,  the 
chief  centre  of  Jewish  population  and  learning.  There 
was  an  academy  established,  according  to  tradition,  at 
Neharda  during  the  exile,  which,  it  may  be,  fostered 
the  studies  of  the  sacred  writers  already  mentioned, 
and  which  certainly  became  the  germ  of  the  learning 
of  Ezra  and  his  companions,  and  caused  all  Israel 
through  its  manifold  dispersions  to  look  to  Babylon  as 
the  capital  of  their  scattered  race,  and  as  possessing  the 
love  of  the  law.1  Such  an  habitual  acquiescence  in 
their  expatriation  coincided  with  the  strains  of  marked 
encouragement  which  came  from  the  Prophets  of  the 
Captivity.  "  Build  ye  houses,  and  dwell  in  them," 
said  Jeremiah  to  the  first  detachment  of  exiles.  "  Plant 
"  gardens  and  eat  the  fruit  of  them :  take  wives  and 
"  beget  sons  and  daughters :  take  wives  for  your  sons, 
"  and  give  your  daughters  to  husbands,  that  ye  may  be 
"  increased  there  and  not  diminished.  And  seek  the 
"  peace  of  the  city,  and  pray  unto  the  Lord  for  it,  for 
"  in  the  2  peace  thereof  ye  shall  have  peace."  "  Pray 
"  for  the  life  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  king  of  Babylon,  and 
"  for  the  life  of  Balthasar  his  son,  that  their  days  may 
"  be  upon  earth  as  the  days  of  Heaven,"  was  the  ad- 
vice of  Baruch,  "and  he  will  give  us  strength  and 
"  lighten  our  eyes,  and  we  shall  live  under  the  shadow 

1  Deutsch's  Remains,  342.    Light-         2  Jer.  xxix.  5,  6,  7. 
foot  on    1    Cor.    xiv.     Comp.  Jose- 
jlius,  Ant.,  xv.  2,  2;  xvii.  2,  1-3. 


Lect.  xli.  their  general  condition.  23 

"  of  Nebuchadonosor,  king  of  Babylon,  and  under  the 
"  shadow  of  Balthasar  his  son,  and  we  shall  serve  them 
"many  days,  and  find  favor1  in  their  sight." 

Such  is  the  picture  handed  down  or  imagined  from 
the  earlier  Assyrian  captivity  of  Tobit  and  his 
family  —  himself  the  purveyor  of  Shalmaneser, 
living  at  ease  with  his  wife  and  son  with  their  camels 
and  their  dog,  its  first  apparition  as  a  domestic  friend 
in  sacred  history  —  the  hospitable  communications  with 
his  friends  at  Ecbatana  —  with  his  countrymen  through- 
out2 Assyria. 

Such  at  Babylon  or  in  its  neighborhood  were  the 
homes  of  the  nobles  of  Israel,  who  became  The  Koyai 
possessed  of  property,  with  slaves,  camels,  amiy' 
horses,  asses,  even  with  the  luxury  of  hired  musicians.3 
The  political  and  social  frame-work  of  their  former 
existence  struck  root  in  the  new  soil.  Even  the 
shadow  of  royalty  4  lingered.  It  appears,  indeed,  that 
Zedekiah  the  King,  as  well  as  his  predecessor  Jehoi- 
achin  and  the  High  Priest,  Josedek,  whose  father  had 
perished  at  Riblah,  were  at  first  rigorously  confined, 
and  Zedekiah  remained  in  prison  blind  and  loaded  with 
brazen  fetters  till  his  death,  which  occurred  soon  after 
his  arrival.  But  he  was  then 6  buried  in  royal  state  by 
Nebuchadnezzar  with  the  funeral  fires  and  spices,  and 
with  the  funeral  lamentations  —  even  to  the  very  words, 
"  Ah  !  Lord,"  which  were  used  at  the  interments  of 
the  Kings  of  Judah  ;  and  Josedek,  the  High  Priest,  was 
then  set  at  liberty. 

A  singular  fate  awaited  the   last  lineal  heir  of  the 
house   of  David,   Jehoiachin   or   Jeconiah.     He,  after 

1  Baruch  i.  11.  4  Ezek.  viii.  1;  xiv.  1;  xx.  1. 

2  Tobit  i.  13;  ix.  2;  x.  4.  6  Jer.  xxxiv.  5;   Josephus,  Ant., 
8  Isa.  lviii.  3-6  ;  Ezra  ii.  68,  69.        x.  8,  7. 


24  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLL 

seven  and  thirty  years  of  imprisonment  was  released 
by  the  generosity  of  Evil-merodach,  the  son 
of  Nebuchadnezzar,  who  according  to  another 
legend,  in  disgrace  himself,  had  encountered  Jehoi- 
achin  in  the  same  prison,1  and  who  disapproved  his 
father's  harshness.  The  beard  of  the  captive  king,3 
which  contrary  to  the  Jewish  practice  had  been  allowed 
to  grow  through  all  those  mournful  years,  was  shaved ; 
his  dress  was  changed  ;  a  throne  was  given  him  above 
the  thrones  of  the  other  subject  or  captive  kings ;  he 
ate  in  the  royal  presence,  and  was  maintained  at  the 
public  cost  till  the  day  of  his  death.  In  the  later  tra- 
ditions of  his  countrymen  this  story  of  the  comparative 
ease  of  the  last  representative  of  David  was  yet  fur- 
ther 3  enlarged  with  the  tale  how  he  sat  with  his  fellow- 
exiles  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates  and  listened  to 
Baruch,4  who  himself  had  meanwhile  been  transported 
hither  from  Egypt 5  —  or  how  that  he  married  a  beau- 
tiful countrywoman  of  the  name  of  Susanna,6  or  "  the 
"lily  "  —  the  daughter  of  one  bearing  the  honored  name 
of  Hilkiah  —  that  he  lived  in  affluence,7  holding  a  little 
court  of  his  own,  with  judges  from  the  elders  as  in  the 
ancient  times,  to  which  his  countrymen  resorted ;  with 
one  of  the  Babylonian  "  parks  "  or  "  paradises"  adjoin- 
ing to  his  house ;  surrounded  by  walls  and  gates  ;  and 
adorned  with  fountains,  ilexes,  and  lentisks.8     And  al- 

1  Jerome,  Comm.  on  Isa.  xiv.  19.       malotarcha;  as  there  was  at  Alexan- 

2  Jer.  Hi.  32  (LXX.).  diia  the  corresponding  chief  called 
8  Africanus  (Routh,  Rell.  Sac,  ii.     Alabarch  and  at  Antioch  Ethnarch, 

113).  and  afterwards  in  the  different  set- 

4  Baruch  i.  3.  dements    Patriarch.     Prideaux,    ii. 

8  Josephus,  Ant.,  x.  9,  7.  249;  i.  120. 

8  History  of  Susanna,  1,  2,  4,  5,  6.  8  History  of  Susanna,  4,  7,  15,  54, 

7  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  58.     That  this  whole  story  is  a  later 

office  of  "  tbe  Prince  of  the  Captiv-  fiction,    with    whatever    ground    in 

'ity"  Resh  Golah,  in  Greek  JEch-  earlier  traditions,   appears   at  once 


Lect.  XLI.  THE  FOUR  CHILDREN.  25 

though  from  some  of  the  accounts  it  might  seem  as  if 
he  had  been  literally  the  only  heir  of  David's  lineage, 
yet  it  would  seem  from  others  that  there  was  a  princely 
personage  born  or  adopted  into  his  house,  Salathiel, 
whose  son  had  become  so  Babylonian  as  to  have  borne 
a  Chaldsean  name  for  both  his  titles  —  Zerubbabel  and 
Sheshbazzar.1  Such,  also,  was  the  Benjamite  family 
which  traced  its  descent  from  an  exile  who  had  accom- 
panied Jehoiachin,  and  of  which  the  two  most  illustri- 
ous members  both  bore  foreign  names,  Mordecai  and 
Esther.2 

Such,  also,  was  the  tale  which  narrates  how,  in  the 
Court  of  Babylon,  there  were  four  children  The  Four 
of  surpassing  beauty,  placed,2  according  to Children- 
the  cruel  custom  of  the  East,  in  the  harem  under  the 
charge  of  the  Master  of  the  Eunuchs  —  who  filled  high 
places  amongst  the  priestly  or  the  learned  class,  and 
exchanged  their  Hebrew  names  for  Chaldagan 4  appella- 
tions, one  becoming  Belteshazzar  (Bilat-sarra-utsur, 
"  may  Beltis,"  the  female  Bel,  "  defend  the  king  ! ") 
another  "  the  Servant  of  Nebo  "  (Abed-nego) ;  the  two 
others  Shadrach  and  Meshach,  of  which  the  meaning 
has  not  been  ascertained.  They  were  allowed  to  take 
part  in  the  Government  of  Chaldaea,  and  were  to  all 
actual  appearance  officers  of  the  great  Imperial  Court. 
Their  very  dress  is  described  as  Assyrian  or  Babylonian, 
not  Palestinian  —  turbans,  trowsers,  and  mantles.5 

There  is  no  improbability  in  the  favor  shown  to  these 

from  the  Greek  play  on  the  words  8  Josephus,  Ant,  x.  10,  1. 

(see  note  after  Lecture  XLIL).    But  4  See  a  full  discussion   of  these 

the  remains  of  "la  chaste  Susanne  names  in  the  Speaker's  Commentary 

''de  Babylon"  are  still  shown  in  on  Daniel,  p.  243-246. 

he  Cathedral  of  Toulouse.  6  Dan.  iii.  21;  Herod,  i.  195,  with 

1  See  Lecture  XLIL  Rawlinson's  notes. 
*  See  Lecture  XLV. 
4 


26  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

Jewish  foreigners,  first,  or,  at  any  rate,  first  since  Jo- 
seph, of  that  long  succession  of  Israelites  who, 
by  the  singular  gifts  of  their  race,  have  at  vari- 
ous intervals,  from  that  time  down  to  the  present  day, 
mounted  to  the  highest  places  of  Oriental  or  European 
States.  But,  towering  high  above  the  rest,  the  Jewish 
patriots  of  nearly  four  centuries  later  looked  back  to 
one  venerable  figure,  whose  life x  was  supposed  to  cover 
the  whole  period  of  the  exile,  and  to  fill  its  whole  hori- 
zon. His  career  is  wrapt  in  mystery  and  contradiction 
—  not  a  prophet,  yet  something  greater  —  historical, 
yet  unquestionably  enveloped  in  a  cloud  of  legend. 
Whilst  the  Chaldaean  names  of  the  three  younger 
youths  have  almost  superseded  their  Hebrew  designa- 
tions, the  Hebrew  name  of  the  elder  Daniel,  —  "  the 
"  Divine  Judge  "  —  has  stood  its  ground  against  the 
high-sounding  title  of  Belteshazzar.  It  may  seem  to 
have  corresponded  with  those  gifts  which  have  made 
his  name  famous,  whether  in  the  earlier  or  in  the  later 
version  of  his  story.  That  which  Ezekiel  had  heard 
was  as  of  one  from 2  whose  transcendent  wisdom  no 
secret  could  be  hid  —  who  was  on  a  level  with  the 
great  oracles  of  antiquity.  That  which  first  brings  him 
into  notice  in  the  opening  pages  of  the  Greek  and 
Latin  Book  of  Daniel  is  the  wisdom 3  with  which,  by 
his  judgment  of  the  profligate  elders,  he  "  was  had  in 
"  great  reputation  among  the  people."  He  is,  to  all 
outward  appearance,  an  Eastern  sage  rather  than  a  He- 
brew prophet.     Well  did  the  traditions  of  his  country- 

1  According  to  the  Jewish  tradi-  8  It    is    the   story   of    Susannah, 

tion   he  was  born  at   Upper  Beth-  doubtless,  which   gives  occasion  tc 

horon ;  a  spare,  dry,  tall  figure,  with  the  exclamation  in  the  Merchant  oj 

a  beautiful  expression.     (Fabricius,  Venice  which  has  made  his   name 

1  \24.)  proverbial  in   English:   UA  Daniel 

1  Ezek.  xiv.  14-,  xxviii.  3.  come  to  judgment." 


Lect.  xll  their  sorrows.  27 

men  represent  him  as  the  architect  of  Ecbatana  or  even 
of  Susa,  as  buried  in  state  —  not,  like  the  other  saints 
of  the  Captivity,  in  a  solitary  sepulchre,  but  in  the 
stately  tower  which  he  himself  had  built,  in  the  tombs 
of  the  kings  of  Persia.1  Well  did  the  mediaeval  legends 
make  him  the  arch-wizard  and  interpreter  of  dreams.2 
Rightly  did  the  Carthusian  artist  at  Dijon  represent 
him  amongst  his  exquisite  figures  of  the  Prophets  in 
the  garb,  posture,  and  physiognomy  of  an  Oriental 
Magnate.  Well  did  Bishop  Ken,3  when  he  wished  to 
portray  an  ideal  courtier  before  the  Stuart  Kings,  take 
"  the  man  "  greatly  beloved  :  "  Not  of  the  sacerdotal, 
"  but  royal  line  ;  not  only  a  courtier,  but  a  favorite ; 
"  not  only  a  courtier  and  a  favorite,  but  a  minister ;  " 
—  "  one  that  kept  his  station  in  the  greatest  of  revolu- 
"  tions,"  "  reconciling  policy  and  religion,  business  and 
"  devotion,  magnanimity  and  humility,  authority  and 
"  affability,  conversation  and  retirement,  interest  and 
"  integrity,  Heaven  and  the  Court,  the  favor  of  God 
"  and  the  favor  of  the  king." 

III.  Such  was  the  general  condition  of  the  Israelite 
exiles.  We  proceed  to  give  some  of  its  general  re- 
sults. 

1.  The  first  characteristic  of  the  time  is  one  which 
seems  inconsistent  with  the  quiet  settlement  just  de- 
scribed. 

It  is  the  poignant  grief  as  of  personal  calamity  that 
broods  over  its  literature. 

The  Hebrew  word  for  "the  Captivity,"  unlike  the 
Greek  word,  expresses  a  bitter  sense  of  bereave-  Their 
ment ;  «  Guloth  "  —  "  stripped  bare." 4      They  Desolation- 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  x.  11,  7.  «  Ken,  Prose  Works,  144,  169,  171 

2  Fabricius,  Codex  Pseudep.,  11 34-  4  The  same  word  as  in  Gold**.. 
1136.  Gaulanitis. 


28  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XL1 

were  stripped  bare  of  their  country  and  of  their 
sanctuary ;  almost,  it  would  seem,  of  their  God.  The 
Psalms  of  the  time  answer  to  the  groans  of  Ezekiel,  the 
Lamentations  of  Jeremiah,  as  deep  to  deep.  No  hu- 
man sorrow  has  ever  found  so  loud,  so  plaintive,  so 
long-protracted  a  wail.  We  hear  the  dirge  over  the 
curse  of  perpetual  desolation1  which  lies  on  the  ruins  of 
Jerusalem.  We  catch  the  "  Lust  Sigh  "  of  the  exiles 
as  they  are  carried  away  beyond  the  ridge  of  Hermon.2 
We  see  the  groups  of  fugitive  stragglers  in  the  desert, 
cut  off  by  the  sword  of  robbers,  or  attacked  by  the 
beasts  of  prey,  or  perishing  of  disease  in  cavern 3  or  sol- 
itary fortress.  We  see  them  in  the  places  of  their  final 
settlement,  often  lodged  in  dungeons  with 4  insufficient 
food,  loaded  with  contumely ;  their  faces  spat  upon  ; 
their  hair  torn  off;  their  backs  torn  with  the  lash.  We 
see  them  in  that  anguish,  so  difficult  for  Western  na- 
tions to  conceive,  but  still  made  intelligible  by  the 
horror  of  a  Brahmin  suddenly  confronted  with  objects 
polluting  to  his  caste,  or  a  Mussulman  inadvertently 
touching  swine's  flesh,  which  caused  the  unaccustomed 
food  or  cookery  of  the  Gentile  nations  to  be  as  repug- 
nant as  the  most  loathsome  filth  or  refuse  of  common 
life,5  and  preferred  the  most  insipid  nourishment  rather 
than  incur  the  possible  defilement  of  a  sumptuous  feast. 
We  hear  the  songs  which  went  up  from  their  harps, 
whenever  the  foreigner  was  not  present,  blending 
tender  reminiscences  of  their  lost  country  with  fierce 
imprecations  on  those  cruel  kinsmen  who  had  joined  in 

1  Isa.  xliii.  28;  xlix.  16-19;  li.  1.  6;  li.  13-21;  liii.  Jer.  1.  7-17. 
17-19;  Hi.  9;  lviii.  12;  Lxii.  6  Psalm  cxxix.  3;  cxxiii.  4;  cxxiv.  7 
(Ewald,  v.  6).  (Ewald,  v.  7). 

2  Psalm  xlii.  6;  see  Lecture  XL.  6  Ezek.  iv    12-15  (lb.  6).    Dan.  i. 
•  Ezek.  xxxiii.  27  (Ewald,  v.  6).       5-16. 

4  Isa.  xli.  14;   xlii.    22;   xlvii.   c 


Lect.  xli.  their  sorrows.  29 

her  downfall ;  with  fond  anticipations  that  their  wrongs 
would  at  last  be  avenged.1  We  catch  the  passionate 
cry  which  went  up  "  out2  of  the  depths,"  in  ThePsaims 
which  the  soul  of  the  people  threw  itself  on  Captivity, 
the  Divine  forgiveness,  and  waited  for  deliverence  with 
that  eager  longing  with  which  the  sentinels  on  the 
Temple  wall  were  wont  of  old  time  to  watch  and  watch 
again  for  the  first  rays  of  the  eastern  dawn.  No  other 
known  period3  is  so  likely  to  have  produced  that 
"  prayer  of  the  afflicted  when  he  is  overwhelmed  and 
"  poureth  forth  his  complaint  "  before  the  Divine  Com- 
forter, when  the  nation,  or  at  least  its  most  oppressed 
citizens,  could  compare  themselves  only  to  the  slowly- 
dying  brand  on  the  deserted  hearth,  or  to  the  pelican 
standing  by  the  desert  pool,  pensively  leaning  its  bill 
against  its  breast,  or  to  the  moping  owl  haunting  some 
desolate  ruin,  or  to  the  solitary  thrush,4  pouring  forth 
its  melancholy  note  on  the  housetop,  apart  from  its  fel- 
lows, or  to  the  ever-lengthening  shadow  of  the  evening, 
or  to  the  blade  of  grass  withered  by  the  scorching  sun. 
There  5  were  the  insults  of  the  oppressors,  there  were 
the  bitter  tears  which  dropped  into  their  daily  beverage, 
the  ashes  which  mingled  with  their  daily  bread ;  there 
was  the  tenacious  remembrance  which  clung  to  the 
very  stones  and  dust  of  their  native  city ;  there  was 
the  hope  that,  even  before  that  generation  was  past, 
her  restoration  would  be  accomplished ;  but,  if  not, 
there  remained  the  one  consolation  that,  even  if  their 
own  eyes  failed  to  see  the  day,  it  would  be  brought 
about  in  the  eternity  of  that  Wisdom  which  remained 

1  Psalm  cxxvii.     Jer.  1.  2.  5  Psalm  cii.  8.     This  is  the  only 

2  Psalm  cxxx.  verse  which  seems  more   applicable 
8  Psalm  cii.  3,  4,  6,  7-11.  to  the  Maccabaean  age. 

4  See  "  Sparrow  "  in  Dictionary  of 
the  Bible,  p.  1315. 


30  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

whilst  all  outward  things  were  changed  as  the  fashion 
of  a  vesture.1  And,  again,  there  are  other  songs,  some- 
times of  scornful  derision,  sometimes  of  penitence, 
sometimes  of  bitter  recrimination,  which  would  seem  to 
have  been  seized  by  the  captives  of  Babylon  and  ap- 
plied to  their  own  condition,  and  incorporated  into 
it,  by  adding  the  burden  never2  absent  from  their 
thoughts.  "  Build  Thou  the  walls  of  Jerusalem." 
"  Oh,  that  salvation  would  come  out  of  Zion  !  when 
"  God  bringeth  back  the  captivity  of  his  people,  Jacob 
"  shall  rejoice,  and  Israel  shall  be  glad."  "  God  will 
"  save  Zion,  and  will  build  the  cities  of  Judah  :  that 
"  they  may  dwell  there,  and  have  it  in  possession." 

It  is  this  feeling  which  renders  the  history  of  the 
Exile  or  Captivity  capable  of  such  wide  application. 
It  is,  if  one  may  so  say,  the  expression  of  the  Divine 
condescension  to  all  those  feelings  of  loneliness,  of  des- 
olation, of  craving  after  sympathy,  which  are  the 
peculiar  and  perpetual  lot  of  some,  but  to  which  all 
are  liable  from  time  to  time.  The  Psalms  which  ex- 
press, the  Prophecies  which  console,  the  history  which 
records  these  sorrows  of  the  exiled  Israelites  are  the 
portions  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  which,  if  only  as  the 
echo  of  our  own  thoughts,  have  always  sounded  grate- 
fully to  the  weary  heart.  Want  of  friendly  compan- 
ionship, the  bitter  pain  of  eating  the  bread  of  strangers, 
the  separation  from  familiar  and  well-known  objects, 
here  are  woven  into  the  very  heart  of  the  Sacred 
Books.  "  Prosperity,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  "  is  the  bless- 
The  Man  of  "  mg  °f  the  Old  Testament,  and  adversity  of 
Sorrows.        u  ^  New»  ;gut  ^  wjse  savmg  is  too  broadly 

atated.     The    sacredness  of  adversity  appears   already 

1  Psalm  cii.  8,  14,  24-28.  2  Psalms  li.  18,  19;  xiv.  and  liii 

<?;  Ixix.  35,  36. 


Lect.  xli.  their  sorrows.  31 

in  tlie  age  of  the  Captivity.  The  tragic  fates  of  Jere- 
miah and  Ezekiel  in  its  opening  scene  were  living  ex- 
amples of  the  truth  that  virtue  could  be  revered  and 
honored  in  the  depths  of  national  disaster  and  personal 
sorrow  no  less  than  from  the  height  of  victory  and  of 
splendor.  The  figure  under  which,  in  the  most  strik- 
ing prophecy  of  this  period,  the  Anointed,  the  Chosen 
of  the  Eternal,  appears,  is  of  a  Servant  or  Slave  deeply 
afflicted,1  smitten  of  God,  a  man  of  sorrows  and  ac- 
quainted with  grief.  The  Messiah  of  glory  had  long 
been  looked  for,  but  now  began  to  fade  away.  It  is 
from  this  epoch  that  the  Jewish  people  could  first  dis- 
tinctly conceive  an  Ideal  of  humiliation  and  suffering. 
Judaea  seated,  not  beneath  her  native  palm,  but  be- 
neath the  Euphratean  willow  or  poplar,  is  the  first 
exemplification  of  that  sad  vision  which  reached  its 
highest  consummation  in  those  scenes  of  sacred  suf- 
fering, that  "  Divine  depth  of  sorrow  "  when  the  first 
Evangelist  saw  its  accomplishment  in  the  tender  sym- 
pathy with  the  various  forms  of  sickness 2  and  sorrow 
on  the  hills  of  Galilee ;  when  Philip  pointed  out  to  the 
Ethiopian  Chamberlain3  its  resemblance  to  the  ma- 
jestic silence  and  the  untimely  death  which  had  lately 
been  enacted  at  Jerusalem  ;  when  4  Peter  comforted 
the  slaves  of  the  hard  Roman  task-masters  by  remind- 
ing them  of  Him  whose  flesh  was  torn  by  stripes  as 
cruel  as  those  to  which  they  were  daily  exposed. 

The  more  vividly  that  delineation  of  the  afflicted 
Servant  resembles  the  Prophet  or  Prophets  of  the 
Captivity,  the  Israel  within  an  Israel  in  that  sorrowful 
time,  the  more  clearly  will  it  be  made  manifest  that  the 
application  of  it  in  the  ultimate  stage  of  the   story  of 

1  Isa.  liii.  3,  4,  5.  »  Acts  viii.  32,  33. 

2  Matt.  viii.  17.  *  1  Pet.  ii.  24. 


32  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

Israel  to  the  Prophet  of  Prophets  —  suffering  with  and 
for  his  people,  is  no  arbitrary  fancy,  but  the  fulfillment 
of  the  same  moral  law,  which,  as  Butler  has  well 
pointed  out,  pervades  the  whole  nature  and  history  of 
man.1  "  The  soft  answer  which  restores  good  humor 
"  in  a  casual  conversation  ;  the  forbearance  with  which 
"  the  statesman  meets  the  ignorance  and  prejudices,  the 
ef  censures  and  the  slanders,  of  those  to  whom  he  only 
"  sues  for  leave  to  do  them  good  ;  are  but  instances  of 
"an  universal  law  of  man's  constitution,  discoverable 
"  in  all  human  relationships,  and  which  enacts  that 
"men  can,  and  do,  endure  the  evil  doings  of  their 
"  brethren,  in  such  sort  that,  through  that  endurance 
"  on  the  part  of  the  innocent,  the  guilty  are  freed  from 
"  the  power  of  their  ill  deeds.  There  is  hardly  any- 
"  one  but  has  known  some  household  in  which,  year 
"  after  year,  selfishness  and  worldliness,  and  want  of 
"  family  affection,  have  been  apparent  enough ;  and  yet, 
"instead  of  the  moral  shipwreck  which  might  have 
"  been  expected,  and  the  final  moral  ruin  of  the  various 
"  members,  the  original  bond  of  union  has  held  to- 
"  gether :  there  has  plainly  been  some  counteracting, 
"  redeeming,  power  at  work.  And  when  we  look  to 
"  see  what  is  that  redeeming  power,  ever  at  work  for 
"  those  who  know  and  care  nothing  about  it,  we  always 
"  find  that  there  is  some  member  of  that  family,  —  of- 
"  tenest  the  wife  or  mother,  —  who  is  silently  bearing 

1  "  Men  by  their  follies  run  them-  "ourselves."    (Analogy,  c.  v.)  This 

"  selves  into  extreme  distress,  which  is  the  modern  equivalent  of  the  He- 

"  would  be  fatal  to  them  were  it  not  brew   expression,    "  It  pleased    the 

44  for  the  interposition  and  assistance  "Eternal   to  bruise  him:    he   was 

"  of  others.     God  commands  by  the  "wounded   for  our   transgression." 

"  law  of  Nature  that  we  afford  them  In  this  sense  the  historical  meaning 

"  this  assistance  in  many  cases  where  of  Isa.  liii.  1-10  is  the  best  explana- 

"  we  cannot  do  it  without  very  great  tion  of  its  application  to  the  suffer- 

4  pains,  and  labor,  and  suffering  to  ings  of  Christ.     Compare  Col.  i.  15. 


Lect.  xli.  their  sorrows.  33 

"  all  things,  believing  all  things,  hoping  all  things,  for 
"  them,  but  for  her  or  himself  expecting  little  or  noth- 
"  ing  in  this  world,  but  the  rest  of  the  grave.  Such  a 
"  one  is  really  bearing  the  sins  of  that  household  :  it  is 
"  no  forensic  phrase  transferred  by  way  of  illustration 
"from  the  practice  of  the  law  courts;  but  a  fact,  a 
"  vital  formation,  actually  taking  place,  here,  under  our 
"  very  eyes.  He  who  has  seen  and  understood  this 
"  fact,  in  any  one  of  its  common,  daily,  shapes,  needs 
"  no  commentary  "  *  on  the  realization  of  the  Man  of 
Sorrows,  alike  in  the  suffering  Prophet  or  People  of 
the  Captivity,  and  in  the  Divine  Sufferer  on  Calvary. 

2.  In  one  visible  and  incontestable  form  the  purifica- 
tion of  the  national  character  by  calamity  appeared  at 
once.  Jerusalem  was  lost.  The  Holy  Place  where 
their  fathers  worshipped  was  burnt  with  fire.  The  holy 
cities  throughout  the  Holy  Land  were  a  wilderness. 
All  their  pleasant  or  regal  things  were  laid  waste.2 
The  venerable  summits  of  their  thousand  hills,  the 
green  circles  of  their  consecrated  groves,  the  hallowed 
clifts  of  the  rocks,  the  smooth  stones  of  the  brooks,3 
on  which  they  poured  their  libations,  were  no  longer 
theirs.  In  unexpected  ways  this  bereavement  worked 
back  upon  their  national  life.  It  broke  the  The  rejec- 
fascination  of  the  idolatry  of  Canaan.  It  Poiy. 
has  been  disputed  of  late  whether  the  Semitic  theism# 
race  has  or  has  not  an  exclusive  instinct  of  mono- 
theism. It  would  appear  from  the  Israelite  history 
that  at  least  in  Palestine  there  was  a  direct  tendency 
to  the  contrary.  Only  by  a  constant  and  energetic 
struggle  could  the  Jewish  people  be  kept  from  giving 
way  to  the  natural  seductions  of  their  kindred  nations 

1  Sir  E.  Strachey's  Hebrew  Poli-        2  Isa.  Ixiv.  10,  11,  12, 
iics.  *  Isa.  lvii.  5,  6. 

5 


34  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

—  it  might  almost  be  said,  of  the  outward  scenes,  the 
hill-tops,  the  green  trees,  among  which  they  dwelt. 
But  "  the  nests  were  now  pulled  down  and  the  rooks 
"  had  flown  away."  It  was  not  till  the  connection  with 
their  native  soil  was  snapped  rudely  asunder  by  exile 
that  the  belief  in  One  God,  as  if  freed  from  the  danger- 
ous associations  of  that  soil,  rose  at  once  into  the  first 
place.  The  nation,  as  it  were,  went  into  retreat,  and 
performed  penance  for  its  long  errors  and  sins.  Before 
this  time  there  had  been  but  one  fast-clay  in  the  Jewish 
ritual,  that  of  "  the  great  day  of  atonement."  But 
henceforth  there  were  added  four  new  periods  of  humil- 
iation, all  connected  with  this  epoch,  and  all  carrying 
on,  even  to  this  day,  the  renewal  of  their  contrition 
and  their  sorrow,  for  the  beginning  and  end  of  the 
siege,  for  the  burning  of  the  Temple,  and  for  the  mur- 
der of  the  last  Judcean  Prince.1  From  this  time  for- 
ward the  national  bias  was  changed.  They  leap  over 
the  whole  intervening  period  of  the  mixed  glories  of 
David  and  Solomon,  and  find  the  ideal  of  their  religion 
in  their  first2  father  Abraham.  It  was  like  the  impulse 
with  which  the  Christian  world  in  the  sixteenth  century 
sprang  back  over  the  whole  of  the  Middle  Ages  either 
to  the  Primitive  or  to  the  Apostolical  times.  It  was  the 
Puritanism  of  the  Jewish  Church.  Their  iconoclast 
fervor  became  the  channel  of  their  future  fanaticism,  as 
their  purer  monotheism  became  the  seed-plot  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  seemed  as  though  the  identification  of  Poly- 
theism with  the  odious  thought  of  the  Babylonian  exile 
and  oppression  had  destroyed  its  spell,  even  as  the  fires 

1  Zech.  vii.  5;  viii.  19.     2  Kings  vii.  7-14.     Isa.  xlviii.  18,   19;    xlii. 

txv.    8-25.     Jer.   xl.    1;    Hi.   4,    12  23,  25;  lxiii.  10.     Ezra  ix.  G,  7,  13, 

(Ewald,  v.  22).     See  Lectures  XL.  15.    Nch.  i.  6;  ix.  737;  xiii.  18,  2G. 

and  XLTII.     '  Mai.  iii.  7  (Ewald,  v.  22). 

a  Isa.  li.  2  ;  xli.  8.     Zech.  i.  2-5  ; 


Lect.  XLI.  EEACTION  FROM  POLYTHEISM.  35 

of  Smithfield  disenchanted  the  English  people  of  the 
charm  of  the  Roman   Church,  and  turned  them  into 
zealous  adherents  of  the  Reformation.     The  Babylonian 
worship  was  in  form  very  different  from  that  of  the 
Grecian  mythology.     But  it  was  the  recoil  against  its 
extravagances  which  braced  the  mind  of  the  Jewish 
nation  to  resist  the  seductions  of  the  Macedonian  con- 
querors, three  centuries  later,  and  accordingly  the  sen- 
timents of  the  two  periods  run  into  each  other.     The 
scenes  which  belong  to  the  period  of  the  Captivity  aro 
made  the  framework  of  the   patriotic  exhortations  of 
the  War  of  Independence.     The  literature  of  those  ex- 
hortations throws  itself  back  without  effort  into  the  suf- 
ferings of  the  exiles.     It  is  from  the  writings,  contem- 
porary or   subsequent,  of  this  period,  that  there  has 
come  down  the  bitter  scorn,  the  uncompromising  de- 
fiance, which  have  served  as  the  examples  of  every  like 
protest,  of  the  Maccabees,  of  the  early  Christians,  of  the 
Waldenses,  of  the  Huguenots,  of  the  Puritans.     There 
is  nothing  in  the  earlier  sacred  writings,  if  we  except 
the  fierce  taunts  of  Elijah,  to  equal  the  sarcastic  invec- 
tives levelled  against  the  folly  and  futility  of  idol-wor- 
ship, such  as  breathe  through  the  stories  or  strains  of 
the   Captivity.     Nowhere  is  there  a  bolder  invocation 
of  reason  and  conscience  against  the  external  authority 
and  form  of  religion  than  in  the  solemn  yet  disdainful 
appeal  made  by  the  Evangelical  Prophet  to  the  common 
sense  of  the  artificers1  of  a  sacred  image  —  detailing  the 
whole  process  of  its  manufacture,  and  closing  with  the 
indignant  question  :  "  Is  there  not   a  lie    in  my  right 
"  hand  ?  "      Many  are    the   modern  ecclesiastical   idols 
of  what   Bacon  calls  "  the  Market  place  "    and  "  the 
*  Den  "  —  of  words,  and  of  ceremonies  —  which  would 

1  Isa.  xliv.  9-20. 


36  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI. 

be  dissolved  by  passing  through  the  crucible  of  the 
same  like-searching  analysis  of  their  origin  and  com- 
position. In  the  later  books  which  treat  of  the  same 
epoch  the  same  attack  is  sustained  almost  with  the 
fierceness  of  the  sixteenth  century  against  the  priest- 
craft which  makes  its  sordid  gains  out  of  the  pious  im- 
postures, and  against  the  impotency  of  the  impostures 
themselves.  In  the  apocryphal  Epistle  of  Jeremiah 1 
we  have  the  complete  picture  of  the  religious  proces 
sions  through  the  streets  of  Babylon,  images  plated 
with  gold  and  silver,  clothed  in  purple,  with  gilt  crowns 
on  their  heads;  followed  and  preceded  by  crowds  of 
worshippers.  We  see  them,  too,  in  their  temples,  with 
sword  and  battle-axe  in  their  hands,2  covered  with  the 
dust  stirred  up  by  the  feet  of  pilgrims,  blackened  with 
the  smoke  of  incense  or  candle ;  or  with  the  rust  which 
gathers  over  ancient  gold ;  we  see  the  bats,  the  swal- 
lows and  the  cats  that  creep  about  the  corners  of  the 
temple,  we  see  the  affected  lamentations  of  the  Priests, 
with  their  rent  clothes,3  shaven  beards  and  loud  screams, 
and  the  feasts  placed  before  them,  the  doors  locked 
against  intruders.4  We  are  invited  to  look  at  the 
petty  pilferings  of  the  establishment  by  the  sacred  at- 
tendants. And  then,  in  the  yet  later  book  of  the 
Greek  Daniel,  we  are  shown  the  whole  machinery  oi 
fraud  which  was  at  work  in  those  sumptuous  chapels  at 
the  summit  and  base  of  the  Temple  of  Bel,  which 
Herodotus  saw  himself,  not  without  suspicion  of  foul 
intrigue  —  the  enormous  feast  on  the  great  golden 
tables  —  the  seventy  Priests  with  their  families  —  the 
secret   door   by  which    they  carried    out   their   plots. 

1  Baruch  vi.  4,  12,  72.  *  Baruch  vi.  28,  29. 

2  lb.  15,  20,  23,  24.  6  Bel  and   the  Dragon,  3,  10,  13, 

3  II).  31,  32,  and  33.  14,  15.     Compare  Herodotu3,  i.  181 


Lect.  XLI.  REACTION  AGAINST  IDOLATRY.  37 

These  stories  have  the  very  ring  of  the  early  Christian 
or  the  early  Protestant  iconoclast,  at  once  in  the  gro- 
tesqueness  and  the  energy  of  their  tone.  But  there 
was  even  in  these  dark  reminiscences  of  Babylon  the 
nobler  feeling  that  it  is  not  merely  by  negation  that 
the  false  can  be  driven  out,  but  by  the  fullest  assertion 
of  the  true.  Here  again  we  have  the  sentiment  of  the 
time  expressed  both  in  a  later,  and  in  a  contemporane- 
ous form.  Legendary  and  late  though  it  be,  a  gifted 
teacher  of  our  time  has  loved  again  and  again  to  call  at- 
tention to  the  Song  1  of  the  Three  Children,  the  hymn 
called  "  Benedicite,"  as  the  very  crown  and  flower 
of  the  Old  Testament,  as  containing  the  fullest  protest 
against  idolatry,  and  for  the  simplicity  of  the  true  re- 
ligion. If  so  intended,  it  was  indeed  a  truthful  and  ele- 
vating thought  that  that  supreme  denial  of  the  Gocls  of 
Babylonia,  the  Gods  of  sun,  and  stars,  and  moon,  and 
earth,  and  sea,  was  expressed,  not  by  a  mere  contradic- 
tion, but  by  a  positive  invocation  of  all  that  is  beauti- 
ful and  holy  and  great  in  nature  and  man  to  join  in  the 
perpetual  benediction,  praise,  and  exaltation  of  the 
supreme  source  of  all  beauty,  strength,  and  power. 
And  in  the  Great  Unnamed,  close  upon  the  time,  it  is 
yet  more  vividly  set  forth,  in  a  bold  and  striking  meta- 
phor, how  in  such  dread  extremities,  whether  of  man 
or  of  nations,  the  primitive  and  fundamental  truths  of 
religion  reassert  their  power.  The  Eternal  Supreme, 
as  it  were,  takes  His  place  by  an  irresistible  move- 
ment.2 "  Too  long  in  the  turmoil  of  the  world's  great 
"  race  had  He  held  silence  and  restrained  Himself,  — 

182,  183.     As  in  the  Hebrew,  so  in  p.  23.     Westminster  Abbey  Sermons, 

the  Greek,  Daniel,  the  local  allusions  p.  xiii. 
are  mostly  correct.  2  Ewakl,  v.  53. 

1  Kingsley's  Good  Neics  of  God, 


38  .THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

"  too  long  permitted  His  name  to  be  despised  and  re- 
jected among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Now  He 
"  neither  would  nor  could  hold  His  peace  any  longer  : 
"  with  the  thunder  of  His  voice  He  could  make  the  earth 
"  tremble  from  end  to  end,  and  step  into  the  battle  as 
"  the  only  true  and  eternal  hero,  to  re-establish,  even 
"  though  by  the  profoundest  perturbation  that  could 
"  no  longer  be  avoided,  and  by  the  conflict  of  all  the 
"  gravest  forces,  the  eternal  right  that  had  been  over- 
"  thrown.  '  I  am *  He  ;  before  Me  was  no  God  formed, 
"  neither  shall  there  be  after  Me.  I  will  work,  and 
"  who  shall  hinder  it  ?  '  Hast 2  thou  not  known  ?  hast 
"  thou  not  heard,  that  the  everlasting  God,  the  Eter- 
"nal,  the  Creator  of  the  ends  of  the  earth,  fainteth 
"  not,  neither  is  weary  ?  there  is  no  searching  of  his 
"  understanding.  He  giveth  power  to  the  faint,  and  to 
"them  that  have  no  might  he  increaseth  strength. 
"  Even  the  youths  shall  faint  and  the  young  warriors 
"  shall  utterly  fall.  But  they  that  wait  on  the  Eternal 
"  shall  renew  their  strength  ;  they  shall  mount  up  with 
"  wings  as  eagles  ;  they  shall  walk  and  not  be  weary ; 
"  they  shall  run  and  not  faint."  The  ancient  truths 
are  able  to  bear  all  and  more  than  all  the  burden  which 
the  new  age  can  lay  upon  them. 

3.  With    this    conviction    naturally  sprang   up  that 
independ-    strong  sense  of  individual  conscience  and   re- 

ence  of  ... 

Conscience,  sponsibility  which  Ezekiel3  had  so  profoundly 
expressed.  "  The  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die.  The 
"  soul  that  doeth  righteously,  it  shall  live."  Nowhere  in 
the  whole  of  the  Hebrew  records  (with  the  exception, 
perhaps,  of  the  narrative  of  Elijah)  is  this  perception  of 
the  grandeur  of  solitary  virtue  brought  out  so  strongly 

1  Isa.  xliii.  10-13.  8  Ezekiel  xviii.  4,  9.     See  Lecture 

2  Isa.  xl.  28-31  (Heb.).  XL. 


Lbct.  HI  THEIR  INDEPENDENCE.  39 

as  in  the  three  stories  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  which  have 
enshrined  this  sentiment  of  the  Captivity,  and  which  in 
the  first  ages  of  the  Christian  Church  were  the  three 
8cenes  which  most  visibly  encouraged  the  early  martyrs. 

The  first  was  the  story  of  the  young  Jewish  wife  who 
firm  in  the  faith  of  an  Almighty  Judge,  stood 
unmoved  in  the  dreadful  choice  between  death 
and  dishonor.  "  I  am  straitened  on  every  side  ;  for  if  I 
"  do  this  thing,  it  is  death  to  me  ;  and  if  I  do  it  not,  I 
"  cannot  escape  your  hands.  It  is  better  for  me  to  fall 
"  into  your  hands,  and  not  do  it,  than  to  sin  in  the  sight 
"  of  the  Lord.  ...  0  Everlasting  God,  that  knowest 
"  the  secrets,  and  knowest  all  things  before  they  be 
".  .  .  behold  I  must  die."1  So  in  the  Catacombs 
stands  the  innocent  lamb  of  the  Church  between  the 
two  foxes  ready  to  devour  her. 

The  second  was  the  story  of  the  three  youths,  who,  as 
in  the  later  legend  of  Abraham  and  Nimrod,  The  Three 
were  to  be  thrown  into  that  burning  fiery  fur-  Chlldren- 
nace,2  destined  to  be  the  instrument  of  terror  to  sufferers 
for  conscience  sake  during  so  many  ages.  This  also  in 
the  Catacombs,  and  also  in  the  immemorial  usages  of 
the  Eastern  Church,  is  the  scene  again  and  again  re- 
peated, of  the  three  boys  in  all  the  peculiarity  of  their 
Eastern  costumes  of  Phrygian  caps  and  Persian  trow- 
sers.     Theirs  were  the  words  which  the  father3  of  the 

1  Susannah,  22,  23,  42.  In  the  "  of  the  Chaldees."  But  it  is  a  wide- 
Catacombs  the  story  is  identified  by  spread  eastern  tradition,  localised  on 
the  name  Susanna  over  the  lamb,  and  the  mound  opposite  to  the  Birs-Nim- 
Seniores  over  the  foxes.  rud,  celebrated  in  the  Syrian  Church 

2  The  death  by  fire  is  Chaldasan,  on  January  25,  and  incorporated  into 
as  indicated  in  Jer.  xxix.  22.     The  the  Koran,  xxi.  52-75.     (See  Lane's 

egend   of   Abraham's   escape   from  Selections,  p.  148.) 

the  furnace  of  Nimrod  is  by  some  3  Dan.    iii.   16,    18.      Macaulay's 

supposed  to  be  a  result  of  the  mis-  Hist.  o/Eng.,  ii.  355. 

translation  of  "  Ur  (i.  e.  light  or  fire) 


40  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XLI. 

Wesleys  is  reported  to  have  used  in  reply  to  the  unlaw- 
ful order  of  James  II.  ;  "0  Nebuchadnezzar,  we  are 
"not  careful  to  answer  thee  in  this  matter.  Be  it 
"  known  unto  thee,  0  King,  that  we  will  not  serve  thy 
"  gods,  nor  worship  the  golden  image  which  thou  hast 
"  set  up."  This  is  the  story  which  came  with  such  a 
preternatural  force  from  the  lips  of  Fletcher 1  of  Made- 
ley  to  the  poor  peasant  woman,  trembling  in  fear  of  her 
ungodly  home,  and  which  by  the  poet  of  the  "  Christian 
"Year"  has  been  so  beautifully  worked  up  into  the 
needs  of  common  life. 

When  Persecution's  torrent  blaze 

Wraps  the  unshrinking  Martyr's  head  ; 

When  fade  all  earthly  flowers  and  bays, 
When  summer  friends  are  gone  and  fled, 

Is  he  alone  in  that  dark  hour 

Who  owns  the  Lord  of  Love  and  power  ? 

The  story  of  the  Den  of  Lions2  is  told  in  three  dif- 
ferent versions,  the  one  in  the  Hebrew,  most 
generally  known,  which  places  the  incident 
under  "  Darius  the  Mede  ;  "  the  second,  in  the  Greek, 
which  places  it  under  Cyrus,  in  connection  with  the  in- 
trigues of  the  Priests  of  Bel ;  the  third  in  John  s  of 
Malala,  who  places  it  also  under  Cyrus,  from  Daniel's 
refusal  to  answer  the  question  whether  he  shall  succeed 
against  Croesus.  It  is  the  second  of  these  which  the 
early  Christians  of  the  Catacombs  adopted  when  they 
painted  the  youth  standing  upright  in  prayer  naked 
between  the  lions,  and  relieved  by  the  flight  of  Habak- 

1  Benson's  Life  of  Fletcher,  c.  ix.  to  make  them  its  natural  inhabitants, 
?  8.  like  the  bears  of  Berne.  (Layard's 

2  Dan.  vi.  Here  again  the  local  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  567.)  The 
.•olor  is  faithfully  preserved.  The  one  sculpture  that  remains  is  of  a 
herds  of  lions  which  prowl  round  the  lion  trampling  on  a  man. 

ruins  of  Babylon  might  almost  seem        3  Fabricius,  Codex  Pseudep.  1129 


Daniel. 


Lkct.  xli.  their  independence.  41 

kuk  the  Prophet  from  Palestine  to  Babylon,  a  grotesque 
addition  to  the  Hebrew  record,  redeemed  by  the  fine 
answer  of  the  captive :  "  Thou  hast  remembered  me,  0 
"  God,  neither  hast  thou  forsaken  them  that  seek  thee 
"  and  love  thee." * 

But,  as  in  the  story  of  the  Three  Children,  so  in  that 
of  the  Den  of  Lions,  the  element  which  has  lived  on  with 
immortal  vigor  is  that  which  tells  how,  when  Daniel 2 
knew  "  that  the  writing  was  signed  he  kneeled  upon  his 
"  knees  three  times  a  day,  and  prayed  and  gave  thanks 
"  before  his  God,  as  he  did  aforetime."  How  often  have 
these  words  confirmed  the  solitary  protest,  not  only  in 
the  Flavian  Amphitheatre,  but  in  the  more  ordinary, 
yet  not  more  easy,  task  of  maintaining  the  rights  of 
conscience  against  arbitrary  power  or  invidious  insult ! 
How  many  an  independent  patriot  or  unpopular  re- 
former has  been  nerved  by  them  to  resist  the  unreason- 
able commands  of  King  or  Priest !  How  many  a  little 
boy  at  school  has  been  strengthened  by  them  for  the 
effort  when  he  has  knelt  down  by  his  bedside  for  the 
first  time  to  say  his  prayers  in  the  presence  of  indif- 
ferent or  scoffing  companions ! 2  If  these  stories  were 
first  written  to  sustain  the  Maccabaean  Jews,  yet  their 
impressive  force  is  greatly  strengthened  by  the  scenes 
of  Babylonian  state  in  which  they  are  embedded.  The 
more3  overpowering  the  grandeur  of  Babylon,  the  more 
absorbing  the  impulses  of  the  outer  world,  so  much  the 
more  striking,  so  much  the  more  needed,  is  the  proof 

1  Bel  and  the  Dragon,  33-39.  described  by  Diodorus,  ii.  9  —  prob- 

2  Dan.  vi.   10;  see   Arnold's   Ser-     ably  of  gilded  wood.      The  plain  of 
mons,  iii.  265.  Dura  may  be  (as  in  the  LXX.)  "  a 

8  The  colossal  size  of  the  golden     "plain    within    the    walls;"      see 
image  in  Dan.  iii.  1  (whatever  may     Speaker's  Commentary  on  Daniel,  p 
be  meant  by  it)  is  quite  in  accordance     271. 
with  the  golden  statue,  40  feet  high, 
6 


42  THE  EXILES.  Lkct.  XL! 

that  the  freedom  of  the  human  will,  the  sacredness  of 
truth  and  duty,  are  loftier  and  nobler  than  all.  The 
problem  of  the  necessity  of  living  in  the  midst  of  earth- 
ly influences  and  yet  of  escaping  from  their  evil  is  diffi- 
cult with  an  exeeding  difficulty,  and  has  been  portrayed 
with  wonderful  power  in  one  of  the  most  profound  and 
penetrating *  of  modern  poems.  Yet  it  is  not  without 
solution.  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego  in  the 
court  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  Daniel  in  the  court  of  Da- 
rius, are  the  likenesses  of  "  the  small  transfigured  band 
"whom  the  world  cannot  tame;"  who,  by  faith  in  the 
Unseen,  have  in  every  age  "  stopped  the  mouths  of 
"  lions  and  quenched  the  violence  of  fire."  2  This  was 
the  example  to  those  on  whom,  in  all  ages,  in  spirit 
if  not  in  letter,  "  the  fire  had  no  power,  nor  was  an 
"  hair  of  their  head  singed,  neither  were  their  coats 
"  changed,  nor  the  smell  of  fire  passed  upon  them ; " 
but  it  was  "  as  it  were  a  moist 3  whistling  wind,  and 
"  the  form  of  the  fourth,  who  walked  with  them  in 
"the  midst  of  the   fire,  was  like  a  Son4  of  God." 

Further,  it  is  not  without  significance  that  the  same 
spirituality  isolation  Avhich  nourished  this  independence 
of  Religion.  jn  regarc|  to  outward  secular  observances 
nourished  an  independence  no  less  remarkable  in  re- 
gard to  outward  religious  observances.  The  Israelite 
mind  was  now  weaned,  to  use  the  expression  of  one  of 
the  nearly  contemporary  Psalms,6  not  only  from  Pa- 
gan, but  from  Jewish  objects  of  external  worship. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  form  of  the  revival  of 
the  Levitical  code  on   the   return   to   Palestine,  how- 

1  Clough's  Dipsychus.  made  to  follow  on   his  hearing  the 

2  Heb.  xi.  33,  34.  hymn. 

3  Song  of  the  Three  Children,  *  Dan.  iii.  25.  (Heb.,  and  Jerome 
/crse  27.     The  "astonishment"   of     ad  loc.) 

Nebuchadnezzar  is    in    the    LXX.        *  Psalm  cxxxi.  2. 


Lect.  xli.  their  spirituality.  43 

ever  minute  the  regulations  afterwards  engrafted  upon 
it,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  vast  reaction  of  spiritual 
religion  which  it  finally  provoked  had  been  antici- 
pated in  these  earlier  days  in  which  the  exiles  were  for 
the  time  raised  to  a  higher  sense  of  unseen  things  than 
ever  before.  The  absence  of  any  ritual  or  local  form 
threw  them  back  on  their  own  hearts  and  consciences, 
to  hold  communion  with  Him  who  had  thus  declared  to 
them  by  the  overthrow  of  his  earthly  sanctuary  that 
"  the  Heaven  only  was  His  throne  and  the  earth  His 
"  footstool :  "  "  Where  is  the  house  that  ye  build  unto 
"  me  ?  "  *  "  There  was  at  this  time  neither  Prince  or 
"  Prophet,  or  leader,  or  burnt-offering  or  sacrifice,  or 
"  oblation,  or  incense,  or  place  to  sacrifice  .  .  . 
"  Nevertheless,  in  a  contrite  heart  and  an  humble 
"  spirit "  they  hoped  "  to  be  accepted."  2  From  the 
very  nature  of  the  case  the  sacrificial  system  ceased. 
"  Thou  hast  not  brought  me  the  lambkins  of  thy  burnt- 
"  offerings,  neither  hast  thou  honored  me  with  thy  sac- 
"  rifices.  I  have  not  caused  thee  to  serve  with  an  of- 
"  fering,  nor  wearied  thee  with  incense." 3 

Man's  necessity  is  God's  opportunity ;  the  loss  of 
earthly  ceremonial  is  the  occasion  for  heavenward  as- 
pirations. And  hence  it  is  that  from  the  Captivity 
dates,  not  indeed  the  first  use,  but  the  continued  and 
frequent  use  of  prayer  "  as  a  potent  instrument  for  sus- 
"  taining  the  nobler  part  of  man,"  as  the  chief  access 
to  the  Invisible  Divinity.  Prayer  now  literally  importance 
took  the  place  of  their  morning  and  evening  of  rayer' 
"sacrifice"  their  morning  and  evening  "incense;" 
iow  for   the  first   time  we   hear  of  men    "  kneeling 

1  Isa.  lxvi.  1,2.  8  Isa.  xliii.  23. 

2  Song    of    the   Three   Children, 
verses  14,  15. 


44  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XXI. 

"upon  their  knees  three  times  a  clay"1  praying  and 
making  supplication  before  God.2  Now  for  the  first 
time  assemblies  for  prayer  and  lamentation  and  praise, 
as  afterwards  in  houses  and  synagogues,  were  gath- 
ered by  the  water-side  — "  by  the  rivers  of  Baby- 
lon,"3— "by  the  river  Ulai,"4— "by  the  river  of 
"  Hiddekel," 5  by  the  river  of  the  Mesopotamian 
"Nile,"  6  to  supply  the  place  of  the  brazen  laver  of  the 
Temple  Courts.  Now  more  distinctly  than  before  do 
we  hear  of  faithful  worshippers  in  fixed  forms  of  prayer 
"  setting  their  faces  unto  the  Lord  their  God,  to  seek 
"  by  prayer  and  supplication  that  He  wTould  hear  and 
"do,  hearken  and  forgive  for  His  own  sake."  "The 
"  long  prayers  which  henceforth  appear  in  the  sacred 
"  books  are  only  the  reflection  of  the  earnestness, 
"power,  and  constancy  with  which  this  most  simple 
"  and  wonderful  instinct  for  strengthening  the  spirit 
"  laid  hold  on  every  branch  of  life."  7 

That  which  befell  the  Jewish  people  in  their  Babylo- 
nian exile  has  befallen  them  again  in  their  European 
exile.  When  the  eternal  principles  of  spiritual  wor- 
ship are  represented  by  the  greatest  master  of  modern 
fiction  in  the  person  of  the  Hebrew  Maid  of  the  twelfth 
century,  they  are  but  the  echo  of  what  her  ancestors 
might  have  sung  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates. 
When  Spinoza,  the  excommunicated  Jew  of  Amster- 
dam, insisted  on  those  principles  in  the  treatises  which 
have  been  the  fountains  of  modern  philosophy  and  the- 
ology, he  was  but  following  in  the  footsteps  of  the 
Evangelical  Prophet.     The  overthrow  of  the  Temple 


1  Dan.  vi.  10. 

6  Dan.  x.  4. 

2  Dan.  ix.  3,  19. 

6  Dan.  xii.  5,  6,  7. 

8  Psalm  cxxxvii.  1. 

7  Dan.  ix.  3,  19.     Ewald, 

4  Dan.  viii.  2. 

Lect.  xli.  their  spirituality.  45 

was  needed  yet  a  second  time  to  start  the  soul  alike  of 
the  Jewish  and  of  the  Christian  Church  afresh  on  its 
upward  course. 

And  not  prayer  only,  but  the  homely  acts  of  benefi- 
cence and  kindness  rose  now  for  the  first  time  importance 
to  the  full  dignity  of  religious  ordinances,  ing. 
Almsgiving  steps  into  the  place  of  ceremonial  purifica- 
tion, and  kindliness  mounts  into  the  rank  of  conformity 
to  the  requirements  of  the  law.  These,  too,  four  cen- 
turies later,  were  hardened  into  mechanical  observ- 
ances. But  in  the  times  which  are  represented  in  the 
book  of  Tobit  these  virtues  are  the  natural  and  com- 
mendable substitutions  for  mere  external  forms.  The 
advice  of  Tobit1  to  Tobias,  the  "  good  "  father  to  the 
"  good  "  son,  is  the  very  counterpart  of  that  which  a 
Jewish 2  teacher  of  later  days,  addressing  "  the  twelve 
"  tribes  scattered  abroad,"  described  as  the  pure  and 
undefiled  "  ritual  "  of  the  true  faith. 

And  in  the  more  certain  warnings  of  the  Evangelical 
Prophet  we  find  the  protest  rising  against  the,  super- 
stitions which  already  began  to  cling  to  the  new  and 
simpler  religious  observances,  as  before  to  the  more 
complex.  The  whole  external  system  of  religion  he 
criticises  with  a  withering  analysis.  He  declares  gen- 
erally the  true  sanctuary  of  the  Invisible  to  be  the  hu- 
man heart ;  he  shows  that  every  item  of  the  sacrificial 
worship  may  drift  into  a  meaning  exactly  the  reverse 
of  that  which  the  offerer  imagines.  It  is  possible  for 
the  consecrated  ox  to  become  as  odious  as  a  human  vic- 
tim, the  unblemished  sheep  as  profane  as  the  unclean 
log,  the  prescribed  meat-offering  as  abominable  as  the 

1  Tobit  iv.  3-20.  "  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in 

2  James  i.  1-27.     "The  pure  and     "their  affliction,  and  to  keep  him- 
'  undefiled  '  ritual '  of  religion  is  to     "  self  unspotted  from  the  world." 


46  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

blood  of  swine,  the  incense  no  better  than  that  which 
is  offered  to  idols.1  But  he  also  has  warned  the  com- 
ing generations  that  the  practice  of  devotion  wThich  this 
new  era  had  inaugurated  in  commemoration  of  the  re- 
cent calamities  was  itself  liable  to  pass  into  the  same 
hollo wness  and  perversion  as  the  system  which  it  had 
begun  to  supersede.  With  a  shout,2  with  the  call  as  of 
a  trumpet  like  to  that  with  which  in  olden  days  solemn 
assemblies  were  convened,  the  Prophet  warns  the  wor- 
shippers against  heedlessly  frequenting  them.  The 
black  sackcloth,  the  couch  of  ashes,  the  pendulous 
movement  of  the  head  to  and  fro,  after  the  mechanical 
fashion  of  Eastern  devotees,  corresponding  to  the  up- 
turned eyes  and  folded  hands  and  demure  demeanor  of 
the  West,  were  to  him  objects  of  a  mockery  hardly  less 
keen  than  he  directs  against  the  heathen  idols.  The 
fast  of  the  true  religion  consisted,  according  to  his 
doctrine,  in  the  moral  duties  of  giving  freedom  to  the 
slave,  provision  to  the  hungry,  shelter  to  the  homeless, 
and  hospitality  to  kindred. 

5.  There  was  yet  one  final  result  of  the  Captivity  in 
„,,     ...      which  its  outward  and  inward   lessons   both 

The  widening 

of  view.  combined.  The  contact  of  the  exiles  with 
the  conquering  race,  their  separation  from  their  own 
country,  the  higher  spiritual  view  of  the  Divine  nature 
thus  revealed,  united  in  opening  to  them  more  widely 
the  larger  horizon  of  which  before  they  had  enjoyed 
but  imperfect  glimpses,  and  strengthened  the  convic- 
tion that  the  religion  which  they  professed  was  not  and 
could  not  be  confined  to  one  nation  only.  The  son  of 
the  stranger  was  no  longer  to  say  that  the  Eternal  had 
utterly  separated  him  from  His  people :  even  the 
Priesthood  was  no  longer  to  be  confined   to  a  Jewish 

'  Isa.  lxvi.  1-3.  2  Isa.  lviii.  1-12. 


Lect.  xli.  their  extended  views.  47 

tribe.1  The  truth  was  gradually  dawning  that  the  Un- 
seen Divinity  whom  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  wor- 
shipped was,  strange  as  it  seemed  to  them,  strange  as 
it  seems  to  many  even  now,  essentially  the  same. 

Even  in  detail  the  impress  of  Babylon  was  stamped 
on  the  future  of  their  race.  Their  vernacular  tongue 
henceforth  ceased  to  be  Hebrew,  and  became  instead 
the  Aramaic  or  Chaldean  of  the  country  of  their  exile. 2 
The  Aramaic  dialect  penetrated  even  into  their  sacred 
books.  The  Aramaic  calendar,  beginning  with  the  au- 
tumn, with  new  names  for  the  months,  superseded  the 
Hebrew  calendar,  which  had  begun  with  the  spring.3 
The  lower  arts  of  astrology  and  exorcism  in  all  proba- 
bility passed  from  Chaldsea  into  the  Jewish  usages,  nev- 
er to  be  again  cast  out,  and  assuming  at  some  critical 
periods  of  their  history  a  strange  predominance.4  The 
imagery  of  Ezekiel  and  Daniel  is  taken  direct  from  the 
gigantic  figures,  monster-headed,  and  with  vast  wings, 
that  we  see  sculptured  on  the  walls  of  Nineveh  and 
Persepolis.  But  the  effect  on  the  general  expansion  of 
their  mental  ideas  was  even  yet  more  visible.  Scattered 
as  they  were  amongst  foreign  nations,  they  derived 
from  this  intercourse  sympathies  and  consolations  which, 
humanly  speaking,  would  have  been  impossible  had 
they  always  been  shut  up  within  the  narrow  limits  of 
Palestine.  The  fall  of  these  ancient  empires  strikes  a 
pang  5  of  deep  pity  through  the  hearts  of  the  Prophets, 
who  in  the  previous  generation  would  only  have  re- 
joiced in  the  judgment  overtaking  them.     In  this  sense 

1  Isa.  lvi.  3;  Ixvi.  21    (Ewald,  v.  *  Comp.  Juvenal,  Sat.  iii.  13;  vi. 
26).  541-546;    Acts   xix.    13,   19;    Matt. 

2  See    the   elaborate    passage   in  xii.  27;  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Bahy- 
Deutsch's  "  Essay  on  the  Targums"  Ion,  p.  510-513. 

'Remains,  324).  6  See  Lecture  XL. 

8  Kaliseh's  Commentary,  ii.  269. 


48  THE  EXILES.  Lect.  XL] 

the  visions  of  the  Book  of  Daniel  are  not  unsuitably 
placed  in  this  new  unfolding  of  the  world's  destinies. 
Part  of  that  book,  as  we  have  seen,  attaches  itself  to 
the  events  of  the  Captivity ;  part  of  it,  as  we  shall 
see,  to  the  events  of  the  Maccabgean  age ;  but  the  pur- 
pose of  the  whole  is  the  expression  of  the  universal 
plan  of  human  history.  It  is  not  only  the  first  germ 
of  the  apocalyptic  literature,  which  expanded  through 
the  Sibylline  oracles,  and  the  Book  of  Enoch,  into  the 
kindred  writings,  canonical  or  apocryphal,  of  the 
Christian  era,  but  it  is  the  first  attempt,  rude  and  sim- 
ThePhil0S0.  pie,  but  most  impressive,  at  a  Philosophy  of 
[J^inDS:  History—  the  first  forerunner  of  Herder  and 
,eL  Lessing  and  Hegel.     However  we  date  or  in- 

terpret the  details  of  the  four  Empires,  each  with  its 
guardian  spirit,  we  see  in  them  the  first  perception  of 
the  continuous  succession  of  ages  —  the  recognition  of 
the  truth  that  the  nations  of  the  earth  are  not  merely 
to  be  regarded  in  relation  to  the  Jewish  people,  as  by 
the  older  Prophets,  but  to  be  watched  for  their  own 
sakes  —  that  the  story  of  the  fortunes  of  humanity  is 
not  a  mere  disjointed  tale,  but  is  a  regular  development 
of  epochs,  one  growing  out  of  another,  cause  leading  to 
effect,  race  following  race,  and  empire  following  em- 
pire,1 on  a  majestic  plan,  in  which  the  Divine  Economy 
is  as  deeply  concerned  as  in  the  fate  of  the  Chosen 
People. 

Although  many  of  the  details  of  these  visions  poinl 

1  Comp.  Jos.  Ant.  x.  11,  7.     This  and  Greek;  or,  with  Dr.  Puscy,  the 

view  of  Daniel's  vision  of  the  four  Babylonian,     Persian,    Greek,     and 

empires  remains  the  same  whether,  Roman;   or,  witli  Mr.   Desprez   and 

with  Ewald  and  Bunscn,  we  make  it  Dr.  Williams,  the  Babylonian,  Per- 

I"  In'  Assyrian,  Bahylonian,  Median,  sian,  Macedonian,  and    Grasco-Syr- 

and  Persian;  or,  with  Dr.  Westcott,  ian. 
the    Babylonian,    Median,    Persian, 


Lect.  xli.  their  extended  views.  49 

to  a  far  later  date  for  their  combination  as  exhibited  in 
the  Book  of  Daniel,  there  is  a  singular  congruity  in  fix- 
ing the  scene  of  their  first  appearance  at  this  particular 
crisis.  From  no  other  point  of  view  could  a  seer  so 
well  be  placed  for  the  survey  of  the  various  Powers 
which  were  to  succeed  the  Babylonian  Empire  In  the  Sec_ 
on  the  stage  of  Asiatic  history.  But  apart ond  Isaiah- 
from  these  doubtful  though  magnificent  visions,  there 
remains  the  unquestioned  elevation  of  the  whole  politi- 
cal horizon  of  the  Jews  as  seen  in  the  Evangelical 
Prophet,  of  whose  writings  it  has  been  well  said  that 
they  possess,  "  not  only  a  religious  and  poetical,  but  an 
"  historical  interest  of  the  highest  order,  for  they  mark 
"  the  very  point  where  the  Jewish  history  is  caught  in 
"  the  current  of  the  wars  and  policy  of  a  rising  imperial 
"  power,  is  carried  into  the  great  open  stream  of  the 
"world's  history,  never  again  to  be  separated  from 
"it."1 

In  his  delineations  of  the  future  glory  of  the  restored 
Jerusalem  the  prospect  opens  on  both  sides.  Contact  of 
On  the  remote  outskirts  of  the  East  the  west. 
Prophet  sees  the  troops  of  the  endless  caravans  ;  the 
waving  necks,  the  laden  humps  of  the  camels,  and  the 
dromedaries  bearing  the  gold  and  frankincense,  —  the 
fleets,  as  it  were,  of  the  desert ;  the  crowded  flocks 
of  Oriental  sheep,  with  their  sweeping  tails,  and  the 
rams  and  goats  with  their  stately  horns,  following 
their  Arabian  or  Nabathean  shepherds.  All  these  were 
images  familiar  to  those  who  dwelt  amongst  the  imme- 
morial usages  of  Asiatic  life.  But  the  Prophet  turns 
suddenly  round  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  sees  from 
the  Western  horizon  another  procession  moving,  like 
clouds  of  birds  through  the  air,  the  broken  promonto- 

1  Matthew  Arnold,  The  Great  Prophecy  of  Israel's  Restoration,  p.  xiv. 
7 


50  THE   EXILES.  Lect.  XLI 

ries  of  the  Mediterranean  dimly  emerging  like  a  vast 
archipelago  —  "  the  islands,"  as  they  appear  to  the  in- 
habitants of  the  old  continent  of  Asia ;  he  watches  them 
loosed  from  their  moorings  in  the  iEgean  or  Tyrrhenian 
waters,  and  standing  ready  for  the  Divine  command ; 
he  sees  the  white  wings  of  the  sails  of  the  Tyrian  ships 
advancing  from  the  distant  Tarshish  of  Carthage  and  of 
Spain,  and  heading  the  argosies  that  are  to  bring  in 
the  treasures  from  the  unexplored  regions  which  only 
those  hardy  adventurers  could  reach.1 

Thus  is  for  the  first  time  unfolded  the  strange  and 
striking  contrast  between  the  East  and  the  West,  which, 
even  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  two  thousand  years, 
has  never  ceased  to  impress  the  imagination  of  man- 
kind ;  which  inspired  the  Father  of  History  with  the 
motive  idea  of  his  great  work ;  which  has  given  its 
peculiar  and  unique  interest  to  the  One  Religion  of 
after  times,  which,  springing  from  the  East,  has  been 
developed  to  its  full  proportions  only  by  travelling  West- 
ward—  the  Religion  of  the  one  Master  who  belongs  to 
both  —  "Jesus  Christ,"  —  as  He  has  been  called  by  a 
gifted  son  of  the  far  Oriental  World  —  "  the  inheritance 
"  of  Europe  and  of  Asia.  " 2 

The  sense  that  this  prospect  was  beginning  to  open 
was  quickened  and  deepened  by  the  imminence  of  the 
great  event  which  shall  be  described  in  the  next 
Lecture. 

2  Isa.  lx.  4-9.  1  Kcshub  Chunder  Sen's  Essays. 


Lect.  XLII.        THE  END   OF    PRIMEVAL   HISTORY  51 


LECTURE   XLn. 

THE  FALL  OF   BABYLOX. 

The  moment  of  the  Jewish  history  which  we  have 
now  reached  coincides  with  one  of  the  most  strongly- 
marked  epochs  in  the  history  of  the  world.  As  far  as 
the  course  of  human  progress  is  concerned  there  have 
been  three  vast  periods,  of  which  two  have  already 
passed  away.  They  may  be  called,  in  general  terms, 
Primaeval  History,  Classical  History,  and  Modern  His- 
tory. Each  of  these  periods  has  its  beginning,  middle, 
and  end  —  its  ancient  and  modern  stage  —  but  the 
whole  of  each  is  marked  by  its  own  general  character- 
istics. In  the  Primeval  History  we  must  include  all 
that  series  of  events  which  begins  with  the  first  The  end  of 

°  .       Primaeval 

dawn  of  civilization  in  Egypt  and  Mesopotamia.  History. 
It  is  a  period  of  which  the  Semitic  races  (taking  that 
word  in  its  most  extended  sense)  were  the  predominant 
elements  of  power  and  genius  —  the  Assyrians  at  Nin- 
eveh, the  Phoenicians  in  Tyre  and  Sidon  and  their 
distant  colonies,  the  Israelites  in  Palestine,  the  Egyp- 
tians, though  with  infusion  of  other  races,  in  the  valley 
of  the  Nile,  the  Chalcleeans,  though  with  a  like  hetero- 
geneous infusion,  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates.  Of 
these  nations,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  Israel- 
ites, we  have,  properly  speaking,  no  history.  Their 
manners  and  customs,  their  religion,  the  succession  of 
their  sovereigns  are  known  to  us.    But  we  have  no  con- 


52  THE  FALL   OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XL11 

tintious  series  of  events;  although  the  knowledge  of 
them  is  fuller,  through  the  investigations  of  the  last 
fifty  years,  than  in  former  times,  yet  it  is  still  shadowy, 
fragmentary,  mythical.  They  are  like  the  figures  seen 
Beginning  in  the  dreams  of  Sardanapalus,  as  depicted  by 
History"  the  modern  poet;  here  a  mighty  hunter  or  con- 
queror like  Nimrod,  or  Sesostris,  or  Sennacherib,  there 
a  fierce  and  voluptuous  queen  like  Semiramis  —  yet 

All  along 
Of  various  "  aspects,  but  of  one  expression."  1 

But  the  time  was  now  arrived  when  this  giant  age  was 
b.  c.  5G6.  to  come  to  an  end.  It  is  the  epoch  in  the 
r,."r.' r,;;o.  Eastern  World  when  we  begin  to  discern  the 
ofCCyr™  lineaments  and  traits  of  the  first  teachers  of 
tus'Ynd  farther2  Asia,  whose  careers  are  distinctly 
R.rc'572.  known  to  us,  and  whose  influence  still  lives 
SupeH"isUS  down  to  our  own  time.  In  the  Western 
World  it  is  the' date,  almost  to  a  year,  when  Grecian 
literature  begins  to  throw  its  light  far  and  wide  on 
everything  that  it  touches.  Even  in  Egypt,  Amasis  is 
the  first  king  of  whose  personal  character  we  have  any 
knowledge  as  distinct  from  the  public  acts,3  or  the 
length  of  the  reigns,  of  the  other  Pharaohs.  In  the 
same  generation,  even  in  the  very  same  year,  we  meet 
the  accession  of  two  great  potentates  in  Greece  and  in 
the  Grecian  colonies  of  Asia  Minor  —  Pisistratus  at 
Athens,  Croesus  at  Sard  is.  The  same  date  brings  us 
into  the  midst  of  the  first  authentic  characters  of 
Roman  history  in  the  reign  of  the  Tarquins.3  From 
this  time  forward  the  classical  world  of  Greece  and  Italy 
occupies  the  whole  horizon  of  our  thoughts,  till  its  own 
lays  are  numbered  by  the  fall  of  Rome  and  the  inva- 

1  Byron's    Sardanapalus,  act  iv.,         2  See.  Lecture  XLV. 
scene  1.  *  Kenrick's  Egypt,  ii.  4  29. 


Lect.  xlii.         importance  of  the  epoch.  53 

sion  of  the  German  tribes,  which  was  to  usher  in  the 
period  of  Modern  History  in  Europe.  With  a  like 
v-atastrophe  did  the  earlier  epoch  come  to  its  conclu- 
sion, but  in  the  continent  which  had  been  its  chief  seat 
—  in  Asia. 

And  it  is  exactly  this  momentous  juncture  of  secular 
history,  this  critical  pause  between  the  middle  and  the 
final  epoch  of  Jewish  history,  at  which  we  are  now  ar- 
rived. The  fall  of  Jerusalem  coincides  with  the  fall,  or 
the  beginning  of  the  fall,  of  those  ancient  monarchies 
and  nations  which  had  occupied  the  attention  of  civil- 
ized men  down  to  this  time.  We  have  already  seen 
how  the  chorus  of  the  Jewish  Prophets  at  the  close  of 
the  monarchy  prepared  the  way  for  the  final  overthrow 
of  the  oldest  historic  world,  much  as  the  Christian 
Fathers  heralded  the  overthrow  of  the  Greco-Roman 
world.  We  have  seen  how x  Ezekiel  sat  over  against 
the  grave  of  the  nations,  into  which  tribe  after  tribe, 
kingdom  after  kingdom,  even  the  stately  ship  of  Tyre, 
the  cedar  of  Assyria,  the  venerable  Egypt,  went  plung- 
ing down  to  the  dark  abyss  where  "the  bloody 
"  corpses  "  of  the  past, 

yet  but  green  in  earth, 
Lay  festering  in  their  shrouds. 

But  now  the  oldest,  the  grandest  of  all  was  about  to 
descend  into  the  same  sepulchral  vault  which  had  re- 
ceived all  its  predecessors  and  rivals. 

The  event  when  it  came  to  the  Israelite  captives 
Eould  have  been  no  surprise.  It  had  been  long  fore- 
seen by  those  who  sang  by  the  water-side.2  They  were 
told  how,  even  before  the  Captivity,  on  occasion  of  a 

-  Ezek.  xxiv.-xxxii.    See  Lecture        2  Psalm  exxxvii.  3. 
XL. 


54  THE  FALL   OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XLII 

visit  of  homage  which  the  Jewish  King  Zeclekiah  paid 
to  Nebuchadnezzar  in  the  early  part  of  his  reign,  Jere- 
miah had  recorded  his  detailed  prediction  of  the  over- 
throw of  Babylon  in  a  scroll,  which  he  confided  to 
Seraiah,  brother  of  Baruch,  himself  a  high  1  officer  in 
the  Judsean  Court.  Not  till  he  reached  the  quays  of 
the  Euphrates  was  Seraiah  to  open  and  read  the  fatal 
record,  with  the  warning  that  "  Babylon  shall  sink,  and 
"  shall  not  rise  again  from  the  face  of  the  evils  that 
"  shall  come  upon  her."  2  Deep  in  its  bed  the  mighty 
river  was  believed  to  have  kept  its  secret  as  a  pledge 
of  the  approaching  doom.  What  that  doom  was  the 
events  now  began  to  disclose. 

It  will  be  our  object  to  indicate  the  impression  left  by 
it  on  the  Israelite  spectators,  the  only  spectators  who  by 
means  of  these  thrilling  utterances,  remain,  as  it  were, 
the  living  witnesses  of  the  whole  transaction ;  confirmed 
on  the  whole  by  the  broken  and  scattered  notices  pre- 
served in  later  Chaldsean  annals,  or  gathered  together 
by  the  Greeks  who  penetrated  during  the  next  century 
into  Central  Asia. 

It  might  have  been  thought  difficult  to  imagine  from 
what  quarter  the  destroyer  should  come.  The  chief 
rivals  of  Babylon  were  gone.  The  dominions  that  had 
with  it  played  their  part  on  the  battlefield  of  the 
nations  had  passed  away,  and  the  Empire  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar was  left,  as  it  seemed,  in  solitary  and  unassail- 
able majesty.  "  I  have  made  completely  strong  the 
"  defences  of  Babylon,"  said  Nebuchadnezzar  in  his 
great  inscription  ;  "  may  it  last  for  ever !  " 3 

1  Jer.    li.   59.     A.  V.,    "a   quiet         2  Jer.  li.  61-64;  xxix.  10. 
"prince"  —  probably  the    "  officer         8  Standard  Inscription  in  Rawlin- 
;'of  the  king's  bed-chamber,"  and     son's  Herodotus,  ii.  586. 
\herefore  indispensable  on  the  jour- 
aey. 


Lbct.  XLII.  THE  PEKSIAN  INVASION-  55 

Not  so.     The  prescient  eye  of  the  Hebrew  Prophets 
was  clearly  fixed  on  that  point  of  the  horizon  whence 
the  storm  would  issue.     There  was  a  mightier  The 
wall  even  than  the  walls  of  Babylon,  with  gates  gjjjj, 
which   could  not  be   opened  and  shut  at  the  B-  c>  539' 
command  of  Princes,  that  runs  across  the  centre  of  the 
whole  Ancient  World  ;    the  backbone  alike  of  Europe 
and  Asia.     It  begins  in  the  far  East  with  the  Hima- 
layas ;  it  attaches  itself  to  the  range  of  the  diverging 
lines  of  the  Zagros  and  Elburz  ranges  ;  it  unites  them 
in  the  Imaus,  the  Caucasus,  and  the  Taurus ;  it  reap- 
pears after  a  slight  interruption  in  the  range  of  Hsemus ; 
it  melts  into  the  Carpathian  and  Styrian  Mountains ;  it 
rises  again  in  the  Alps ;  it  reaches  its  western  buttress 
in  the  Pyrenees. 

On  the  southern  side,  on  the  sunny  slopes  of  this 
gigantic  barrier  grew  up  the  civilized  nations  of  antiq- 
uity, the  ancient  monumental  religions  and  politics  of 
India,  Mesopotamia,  and  Egypt,  as  afterwards  farther 
west,  the  delicate  yet  powerful  commonwealths  of  Asia 
Minor,  Greece,  and  Italy.  On  the  northern  or  darker 
side,  behind  its  mighty  screen,  were  restrained  and 
nurtured  the  fierce  tribes  which  have  from  time  to  time 
descended  to  scourge  or  regenerate  the  civilization  of 
the  South.  Such  in  later  days  have  been  the  Gauls, 
the  Goths,  the  Vandals,  the  Huns,  the  Tartars  ;  such, 
more  nearly  within  the  view  of  the  age  of  which  we 
are  now  speaking,  the 1  Scythians ;  and  such  was  now, 
although  in  a  somewhat  milder  form,  the  enemy  on 
whom,  as  Tacitus  in  the  day  of  Trajan  already  fixed 
his  gaze  with  mingled  fear  and  admiration  on  the  tribes 
of  Germany,  so  the  Israelite  Prophets  looked  for  the  de- 
velopment of  the  new  crisis  of  the  world.     Already  the 

1  See  Lectures  XXXIX.  and  XL. 


56  THE  FALL  OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XL1I 

Psalmist  had  seen  that  neither  in  the  East  nor  West 
nor  South,  but  in  the  North  was  the  seat  of  future 
change.1  Already  Ezekiel  had  been  startled  by  the 
vision2  of  the  wild  nomads  pouring  over  the  hills  that 
had  hitherto  parted  them  from  their  destined  prey. 
And  now  Jeremiah,  and  it  may  be  some  older  Prophet, 
heard  yet  more  distinctly  the  gathering  of  war  —  an 
assembly  of  great  nations  against  Babylon  from  the 
north  country,  with  the  resistless  weapons 3  for  which 
all  those  races  were  famous. 

And  now  yet  more  nearly  the  Great  Unnamed  points 
not  only  to  the  north,  but  to  the  eastern  quarter  of  the 
north.  Already  on  "  the  bare  hill- top  "  a  banner  was 
raised  and  the  call  was  gone  forth  ;  there  was  a  rushing 
sound  as  of  multitudes4  in  the  distant  mountain  valleys ; 
the  shriek  of  alarm  went  up  from  the  plains ;  the  faces 
of  the  terrified  dwellers  of  Mesopotamia  were  lit  up 
with  a  lurid  glow  of  fear. 

It  was  the  mighty  race  which  occupied  the  table-land 
between  the  two  mountain-ranges  of  Zagros  and  Elburz, 
of  which  we  have  just  spoken  —  the  Median  and  Per- 
sian tribes  now  just  rising  into  importance.  That 
nation  whose  special  education  was  to  ride  on  horses,  to 
shoot  with  the  bow,  and  to  speak  the  truth,5  was  now  in 
full  march  against  no  less  a  prey  than  Babylon  itself. 

Their  bright  "  arrows 6  were  the  arrows  of  a  mighty 7 
"  expert  man  ;  the  archers,  the  nation  of  archers,  with 

1  Psalm  lxxv.  6.  predictive  and   not   merely  descrip- 

3  See  Lecture  XL.  tive  of  the  fall   of   Babylon.     Still, 
8  Jer.  I.  9.  they  probably  belong  to  the   same 

4  Isa.  xiii.  2,  3;  ib.  4,  5.  The  general  period  of  the  Captivity, 
question  of  the  date  of  Isa.  xiii.  1  —  though  incorporated  in  the  earlie? 
xiv.  23  and  xxi.  1-10  stands  on  dif-     part  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah. 

ferent  grounds  from  that  of  the  date         5  Herodotus,  i.  136. 
Di    ba.   xl.-lxvi.,    and    Ewald    and         °  Jer.  1.  d  ;  li.  11. 
Gesenius  agree  in  regarding  them  as         7  Jer.  1.  14:  li.  42. 


Lect.  XLII.  CYRUS.  57 

"  their  bows  all  bent,"  were  gathering  to  camp  against 
the  city.  They  hold  their  bows  and  lances,  they  bend 
their  bows  and  shoot  and  spare *  no  arrows.  They  are 
there  with  their  splendid  cavalry  riding  on  horses  in 
battle-array  ;  they  shout  with  their  deafening  war-cry.2 

The  force  and  energy  with  which  their  descent  is  de- 
scribed agrees  with  their  significance  in  the  history  of 
the  Eastern  empires.  "  With  the  appearance  of  the  Per- 
"  sians,"  says  a  brilliant  French  writer,  "  the  movement 
"  of  history  begins  and  humanity  throws  itself  into  that 
"  restless  inarch  of  progress  which  henceforth  is  never 
"  to  cease.  A  vague  instinct  pushes  them  forward  to 
"  the  conquest  of  all  around  them.  They  throw  them- 
"  selves  headlong  on  the  Semitic  races.  They  are  not 
"  contented  with  Asia.  The  East  under  them  seems  to 
"  migrate  towards  the  West.  They  do  not  halt  even 
"  at  the  Hellespont,  nor  till  they  have  reached  the 
"  shores  of  Salamis."3 

And  not  merely  the  nation,  and  the  hour,  but  the 
very  man  was  now  in  sight  who  should  accomplish  this 
great  work. 

The  fated  hero  had  arisen,  in  the  same  eventful  year 
of  which  we  have  already  spoken,  the  year  560,  twenty 
years  after  the  beginning  of  the  Jewish  exile  —  Cyrus, 
or  Koresh,  or  Khosroo,  the  King  of  the  Persians.  Al- 
ready the  Grecian  colonies  had  felt  his  heavy 
hand  :  already  Media  had  been  absorbed  into 
his  dominion.  On  him  the  expectation  of  the  nations 
was  fixed.  Would  he  be,  like  the  other  chiefs  and 
princes  of  the  age,  a  mere  transient  conqueror,  or 
would  he  indeed  be  the  Deliverer  who  should  inaugu- 

1  Jer.  1.  42.  8  A  striking  passage,  though  with 

*  Jer.  K.  14;  1.  15.  some    exaggeration,    from    Quinet, 

Genie  des  Religions,  pp.  301,  302 


58  THE  FALL  OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XLIL 

rate  the  fall  of  the  old  and  the  rise  of  the  new  world  ? 
"  I  have  called  the  man  from  the  East,  the  ravenous 
"  bird/'  the  eagle  1  of  Persia,  which  long  blazed  on  its 
standards.  With  no  uncertain  sound  the  greatest 
prophetic  voice  of  the  time  marked  him  out  as  the  one 
Anointed  Prince,2  the  expected  Messiah  alike  of  the 
Chosen  People  and  of  all  the  surrounding  nations. 
"  Thus 3  saith  the  Eternal  to  Cyrus,  whom  I  have 
k*  anointed,  whose  right  hand  I  have  holden,  to  subdue 
"  nations  before  him.  Cyrus  is  my  shepherd  and  shall 
perform  all  my  pleasure." 

The  day  of  Persian  glory  which  he  ushered  in,  the 
empire  which  he  founded,  for  that  brief  time,  embraced 
all  that  there  was  of  civilization  from  the  Himalayas  to 
the  iEgean  sea.  "  For  one  brilliant  moment  the  Per- 
"  sian,  like  the  Greek  afterwards,  and  the  Roman  at  a 
"  still  later  day,  was  the  central  man  of  the  world."  4 

There  was,  indeed,  everything  which  conspired  to  fit 
the  new  conqueror  for  this  critical  place  in  the  history 
of  the  world  and  of  the  Church.  -To  us,  looking  at  the 
crisis  from  a  distance  that  enables  us  to  see  the  whole 
extent  of  the  new  era  which  he  was  to  open,  this  poetic 
and  historic  fitness  is  full  of  deep  significance.  We  are 
entering  on  an  epoch  when  the  Semitic  race  is  to  make 
way  for  the  Aryan  or  Indo-Germanic  nations,  which, 
through  Greece  and  Rome,  are  henceforth  to  sway  the 
destiny  of  mankind.  With  those  nations  Cyrus,  first 
of  Asiatic  potentates,  is  to  enter  into  close  relations  — 
with  Greece  henceforth  the  fortunes  of  Persia  will  be 
inseparably  bound  up. 

1  Isa,   xli.    2  ;    xlvi.    11.      Comp.         8  Isa.    xliv.    28;    xlv.    1.     Comp. 
JEsch.,  Pers.,  205-210;  Xen.,  Cyrop.,     Dan.  ix.  25. 

'ii.  1.  *  The  Wise  Men,  by  Dr.  Upham, 

2  See  Lecture  XL.  p.  115. 


Lect.  xlii.  the  great  monotheist.  59 

Nay,  yet  more,  of  all  the  great  nations  of  Central 
Asia  Persia  alone  is  of  the  same  stock  as  Greece  and 
Rome    and    Germany.     It  was  a  true   insight  The  repre- 

sentative 

into   the  innermost  heart   of  this  vast  move-  of  the 

i  Arvan 

ment  which  enabled  the  Prophet,  as  we  nave  races. 
seen,  to  discern  in  it  not  merely  the  blessing  of  his 
own  people,  but  the  union  of  the  distant  isles  of  the 
Western  sea  with  the  religion  hitherto  confined  to  the 
uplands  of  Asia.  It  was  one  of  those  points  of  meet- 
ing between  the  race  of  Japheth  and  the  race  of  Shem 
that  have  been  truly  said  to  be  the  turning-points  of 
human  history. 

Yet  again,  though  we  know  but  little  of  the  indi- 
vidual character  of  Cyrus,  he,  first  of  the  ancient  con- 
querors, appears  in  other  than  a  merely  despotic  and 
destructive  aspect.  It  can.  hardly  be  without  founda- 
tion that  both  in  Greek  and  Hebrew  literature  he  is 
represented  as  the  type  of  a  just  and  gentle  prince. 
In  the  Cyropaedia  of  Xenophon,  however  mingled  with 
fiction,  he  appears  as  no  other  barbaric  sovereign  that 
figured  in  Grecian  story.  In  the  Jewish  Prophet  and 
Chronicler  he  is  a  Liberator  and  Benefactor  of  Israel 
such  as  had  never  crossed  their  path.  First  of  the  great 
Asiatic  kings,  we  can  track  him  through  the  varying 
adventures  of  youth  and  age,  from  his  cradle  to  hia 
grave,  and  stand  (as  who  could  stand  unmoved  ?)  before 
the  simple  yet  stately  tomb  of  snow-white  marble  which 
still  remains  at  Pasargadae,  and  once  contained  the 
golden  coffin  of  "  Cyrus  the  King,  the  Achsemenian."  1 
But,  yet  more,  he  belongs  to  the  only  nation  in  the 
then  state  of  the  world  which,  in  any  sense  The  great 
at  all  approaching  to  the  Israelite,  acknowl- 
edged the  unity  of  the  Godhead.     The  religion  of  the 

1  Rawlinson,  iv.  294. 


60  THE   FALL   OF  BABYLON  Lkct.  XLII 

Persians  was,  of  all  the  Gentile  forms  of  faith,  the 
most  simple  and  the  most  spiritual.  Their  abhorrence 
of  idols  was  pushed  almost  to  fanaticism.  "  They  have 
"no  images  of  the  gods,  no  temples,  no  altars,  and 
"  consider  the  use  of  them  a  sign  of  folly."  This  was 
Herodotus'  account  of  the  Persians  of  his  own  day, 
and  it  is  fully  borne  out  by  what  we  know  of  then- 
religion  x  and  of  their  history.  When  Cyrus  broke  in 
upon  Babylon,  as  when  his  son  Cambyses  broke  in  upon 
Egypt,  as  when  Xerxes  broke  in  upon  Greece,  it  might 
almost  have  seemed  as  if  the  knell  of  Polytheism  had 
been  sounded  throughout  the  world. 

Who  or  what   was    the  Prince    that   reigned2  over 
Babylon  in  this  the  supreme  hour  of  her  fate, 

Belshazzar.  .  ,  ,     _  . 

or  now  long  its  defence  was  maintained  against 
the  invading  army  we  can  only  discern  with  dificulty 
amongst  the  conflicting  accounts.  The  only  king  in 
whom,  after  Nebuchadnezzar,  the  Hebrew  and  the 
Chaldaean 3  annals  clearly  agree  is  Evil-merodach,  the 
liberator  of  Jehoiachin.  Then  come,  in  rapid  succes- 
sion in  the  Chaldsean  annals,  Neriglissar,4  Laboroso- 
archod,  and  Nabu-nahid.5  In  Herodotus  the  interval 
is  filled  by  the  one  name  of  Labynetus,6  in  the  Book  of 
Daniel7  by  the  one  name  of  Belshazzar,  which,  there 
alone  preserved  in  written  records,  has  recently  re- 
ceived from  the  monuments  the  apparent  elucidation 
that  it  is  the  same  as  8  Bil-shar-uzar,  the  son  and  col- 

1  Herod,  i.   131;  see    Rawlinson's         5  This  name  appears  on  the  nionu- 
Herodotus,  vol.  i.,  Essay  5.  ments  —  probably  "  Nebo  blesses," 

2  See  the  long  discussion  in  Kiel;  see  Speaker's  Commentary,  p.  30G. 
and   the    Speaker's    Commentary   on         G  llawlinson,  i.  191;  iii.  515,  and 
Dan.  v.  1.  notes  on  Herodotus  (vol.  i.  525). 

8  Berosus,  in  Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  i.  7  Dan.  v.  1. 

20.  8  Probably    "  Bel     protects    the 

*  Probably  Nergal  Sherezer,  Jer.  king."     See  Speaker's  Commentary, 

vxxix.  3,  13.  p.  308. 


Lect.  XLII.  BELSHAZZAR'S  feast.  61 

league  of  Nabu-nahid.  But  "  amongst  all  the  later 
"  reminiscences  of  the  conquest  of  Babylon 1  one  never- 
"  to-be-forgotten  feature  always  rises  above  the  rest, 
"  namely,  the  amazing  rapidity  with  which  the  victory 
"  was  gained,  and  the  manner  in  which  the  whole 
"Chaldaean  supremacy  was  shattered  by  it,  as  at  a 
"  single  blow.  The  capture  of  Babylon  in  a 
"  single  night,  while  the  Babylonians  were 
"  celebrating  in  careless  ease  a  luxurious  feast,  is  the 
"  fixed  kernel  of  the  tradition  in  all  its  forms  ;  and  the 
"  outline  of  it  in  the  Book  of  Daniel  stands  out  all  the 
"  more  boldly  from  the  dark  background,  and  casts  a 
'fiery  glow  upon  the  whole  narrative."2 

That  faint  "  outline  "  has  taken  a  place  in  the  solemn 
imager}*-  of  the  wTorld  that  no  doubtfulness  of  The  last 
details  can  ever  efface  or  alter.  "  There  was  Babylon. 
"  the  sound  of  revelry  by  night "  in  the  streets  of  Ba- 
bylon at  some  high  festival  of  Nebo  or  Merodach. 
Regardless  of  the  dread  extremity  of  their  country  and 
of  the  invading  army  round  their  walls,  the  whole 
population,  through  street  and  garden,  through  square 
and  temple,  wTere  given  up  to  the  proverbial  splendor 
and  intoxication  of  the  Babylonian  feasts ;  music,  per- 
fumes, gold  and  silver  plate,  nothing  wras  wanting.  In 
the  midst  and  chief  of  this  was  the  feast  of  the  King, 
whom  the  Hebrew  tradition  called  "  Belshazzar,  the 
"  son  of  Nebuchadnezzar."  On  this  fatal  night  he 
comes  out  from  the  usual  seclusion  of  the  Eastern3 
kings,  and  sits  in  the  same  hall  with  thousands  of  his 
nobles  at  a  scene  the  likeness  of  which,  even  in  our 
modern  days,  can  be  imagined  by  those  who  have  seen 

1  Ewald,  v.  50,  51.  Greek   accounts   in    Herod,    i.    190; 

a  Ewald.    v.    51.      Compare    the     Xenophon,  Cyrop.,  vii.  5  and  15. 

8  Athenseus,  Deipws.,  iv.  10 


62  THE   FALL   OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XLIL 

the  state  banquets  of  the  most  Oriental  of  European 
potentates  on  the  shores  of  the  Neva  or  the  Mosqua. 
Before  them  is  the  choice  wine  with  which,  from  far 
countries,  the  Babylonian  tables  were  laclen.  From  the 
Temple  of  Bel,  where  they  have  been  treasured  up 
since  the  conqueror  had  carried  them  from  Jerusalem, 
are  brought  the  vessels  of  gold  and  silver,  the  bowls 
and  the  caldrons,  and  the  spoons,  the  knives,  the  cups, 
which  had  been  regarded  by  the  Jewish  nation  as  the 
very  palladium  of  the  State  —  alike  the  thirty  chargers 
and  thirty  vases  of  gold  which  had  been  made  for  the 
Temple  of  Solomon,  and  had  continued  there  till  the 
captivity  of  Jehoiachin,  and  the  thousand  chargers  and 
four  hundred  basins  of  silver  by  which  Zedekiah  had 
supplied  their  place,  and  which  were  carried  away  in 
the  final 1  deportation. 

Into  them  the  wine  is  poured  and  drunk  by  the 
King,  with  his  nobles,  and  with  the  women  of  his 
harem,  who,  according  to  the  shameless  custom  2  of  the 
Babylonians,  are  present  at  the  banquet.  Round  about 
are  placed  the  images  of  the  gods  of  wood  and  stone, 
of  iron  and  brass,  plated  with  gold  and  silver.3 

"  In  that  same  hour  came  forth  the  fingers  of  a 
"  man's  hand  and  wrote  over  against  "  the  great  can- 
dlestick which  lighted  up  the  pale  stucco  on  the  wall 
of  the  Palace,  to  which4  the  banqueting  hall  was  at- 
tached, "  and  the  King  saw  the  part  of  the.  hand  which 
"wrote."  Then  follows  the  panic  of  the  assembled 
spectators  as  they  find  themselves  in  the  presence  of  an 
enigma  which  they  cannot  decipher.     "  I  know,"  said  a 

1  Baruch  i.  8;  Ezra  i.  8,  9.  Sec  8  Isa.  xxx.  22;  xliv.  3;  Baruch 
Lecture  XL.  345.  vi.  4  ;  Jer.  x.  3-5. 

2  Curtius  v.  1;  Herod,  i.  499.  4  Esther  i.  5.     But  see  Layard'a 

Nineveh  and  Babylon,  G51. 


Lect  XLU.  BELSHAZZAE'S  feast.  63 

great  French  scholar  and  philosopher  in  the  Imperial 
Library  of  Paris  in  the  winter  of  1870,  "  I  know 
"  that  I  am  turning  over  the  leaf  of  a  fresh  page  in 
"  history,  but  what  is  on  the  page  I  cannot  read." 
Such  is  the  perplexity  described  when  the  wisdom  of 
all  the  world-renowned  learning  of  Babylon  was  sum- 
moned to  interpret  the  writing,  with  the  offer  of  the 
purple  robe  and  golden  chain  of  royal  favor,  and  the 
next  place  in  the  kingdom  after  the  two  royal  persons 
of  the  State.1  Then  appears  the  venerable  personage 
always  regarded  in  Eastern  Monarchies  with  especial 
reverence,  the  Queen  Mother  —  the  "  Sultana  Valide  " 
—  in  this  instance  increased  if  she  may  be  identified 
with  Nitocris,2  the  daughter  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  her- 
self the  architect  of  some  of  the  great  outworks  of  the 
city. 

Once  more,  in  her  mouth,  the  all-transcending  wis- 
dom and  judgment  of  Daniel  is  set  forth,  reviving  and 
recalling  from  long  seclusion,  as  after  the  manner  of  the 
East,  the  antique  sage 3  or  statesman  of  the  former  gen- 
eration to  rebuke  the  folly  of  the  younger.  And  then, 
like  Elijah  before  Ahab,  like  Tiresias  before  Creon  in 
the  Grecian  drama,  is  brought  the  hoary  seer,  with  his 
accumulated  weight  of  years  and  honors,  to  warn  the 
terror-stricken  King,  and  to  read  the  decree  of  fate 
which  no  one  else  could  interpret.  Where  the  astrol- 
oger and  the  diviner  had  failed,  true  science  had  dis- 
covered the  truth.4  Again  and  again  have  those  mystic 
words  been  repeated,  and  will  be  repeated  to  the  end 

1  Perhaps  meaning  Belshazzar  and  3  Comp.  1  Kings  xii.  6 ;  compare 
Nabunadius  (Speaker's  Commentary,  also  the  story  of  the  Sultan  and 
308).  But,  as  Nabunadius  is  not  Councillors  told  in  Essays  on  Church 
recognized    in    Daniel,   the    Queen  and  State,  195. 

Mother  seems  more  probable.  4  Comp.  Tsa.  xxi.  3  (Ewald). 

2  Herodotus,  i.  185. 


64  THE   FALL   OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XI.II. 

of  time  ;  yet  never  with  more  significance  than  on  the 
occasion  whence  they  are  derived.  They  were,  as  be- 
fitted the  city  which  claimed  to  be  the  mother  of  letters, 
not  in  new  signs  or  hieroglyphics,  but  in  distinct  He- 
brew characters ;  and  through  their  brief  and  broken 
utterance  there  ran  a  double,  treble  significance. 
Mene,1  the  first  word,  twice  recorded,  carried  with  it 
the  judgment2  that  the  days  of  the  kingdom  were  num- 
bered and  ended ;  Tekel  carried  the  doom  that  it  was 
weighed  and  found  light;  Peres,3  the  third,  that  it 
was  divided  and  given  to  the  Persians  (Pharsin) — 
the 4  first  appearance  in  history  of  that  famous  name 
which  now,  for  the  first  time,  stepped  into  the  older 
form  of  "  Elam,"  and  has  never  since  been  lost. 

"  In  that  same  night  was  Belshazzar  the  King  slain  " 
—  so  briefly  and  terribly  is  the  narrative  cut  short  in 
the  Book  of  Daniel.  But  from  the  contemporary  au- 
The  cnP-  thorities,  or  those  of  the  next  century,  we  are 
BabyL.  able  to  fill  up  some  of  the  details  as  they  were 
anticipated  or  seen  at  the  time.  It  may  be  that,  as  ac- 
cording to  Berosus,5  the  end  was  not  without  a  struggle ; 
and  that  one  or  other  of  the  Kings  who  ruled  over  Bab- 
ylon was  killed  in  a  hard-won  fight  without  the  walls. 
But  the  larger  part  of  the  accounts  are  steady  to  the 

i  In  LXX.  and  Josephus  Mene  is  was  "  Meiri,  Tekel,  Medi   u  Phar- 
only  once<  "  sin  ;  "  and  that  Medi  was,  by  read- 
s' The  variation    between  the  va-  ing   it   horizontally,  mistaken  for  a 
rious  versions  suggests  the  probability  reduplication  of  Meni. 
that  there  was  some! bin-  anterior  to  3  The  same  word  for  "division  " 
all  of   them.      (1)    In   Dan.   v.   25,  as  appears  in  Pharisee. 
Mene  oceurs  twice;   in  Dan.  v.  26,  4  The   substitution   of  Phars   for 
once.     (2)  In  Dan.  v.  25,  it  is,  And  Elam  in  the  Book  of  Daniel,  which 
to  the  Persians,  as  though  something  it   has    in    common    with    all    books 
had  dropped  out.     In  Dan.  v.  28  it  after  the  Captivity,  and  with  none 
is    Peres,    "divided."      Mr.    Aldis  during  or  before,  is  one  of  the  indi- 
Wright   suggests    that   the   original  cations  of  its  later  date. 
nscription  ran  perpendicularly,  and  6  Josephus,  Ant.,  x.  11,  §  2. 


Lect.  xlii.  the  capture.  65 

suddenness  and  completeness  of  the  shock,  and  all  com- 
bine in  assigning  an  important  part  to  the  great  river, 
which,  as  it  had  been  the  pride  of  Babylon,  now  proved 
its  destruction.  The  stratagems  by  which  the  water 
was  diverted,  first  in  the  Gyndes  and  then  in  the  Eu- 
phrates, are  given  partly  by  Heroditus  and  partly  by 
Xenophon.  It  is  their  effect  alone  which  need  here  be 
described.  "A  way  was  made  in  the  sea"1  —  that 
sea-like  lake  —  "and  a  path  in  the  mighty  waters." 
"  Chariot  and  horse,  army  and  power  "  are,  as  in  the 
battle  of  the  Milvian  bridge,  lost  in  the  dark  stream 
to  rise  up  no  more,  extinguished  like  a  torch  plunged 
in  the  waters.  The  hundred  gates,  all  of  bronze,  along 
the  vast  circuit  of  the  walls,2  the  folding-doors,  the 
two-leaved  gates 3  which  so  carefully  guarded  the  ap- 
proaches of  the  Euphrates,  opened  as  by  magic  for  the 
conqueror  ;  "  her  waves  roared  like  great  waters,  the 
"  thunder  of  their  voice  was  uttered."  The  inhabit- 
ants were  caught  in  the  midst  of  their  orgies.  The 
Hebrew  seer  trembled  as  he  saw  the  revellers  uncon- 
scious of  their4  impending  doom,  like  the  Persian  seer 
for  his  own  countrymen  before  the  battle  of  Platsea, 
s^06(7T>7  bhvvr}.  But  it  was  too  late.  "  Her  princes, 
"  and  her  wise  men,  and  her  captains,  and  her  rulers, 
"  and  her  mighty  men  were  cast  into  a  perpetual 
"sleep"  from  which  they  never  woke.5  They  suc- 
cumbed without  a  struggle,  they  forbore  to  fight.  They 
remained  in  the  fastnesses  of  their  towering  houses ; 
their  might  failed  ;  they  became  as  women  ;  they  were 
hewn  down  like  the  flocks  of  lambs,  of  sheep,  of  goats, 
in  the  shambles  or  at  the  altar.6     To  and  fro,  in  the 

1  Isa.  xliii.  17.  *  Isa.  xxi.  4.     Herod,  ix.  17. 

2  Herod,  i.  129.  6  Jer.  li.  40. 

8  Isa.  xlv.  i,  2.  6  jer.  ii.  39)  57, 


66  THE  FALL  OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XLU. 

panic  of  that  night,  the  messengers  encountered  each 
other1  with  the  news  that  the  city  was  taken  at 
one  end,  before  the  other  end  knew.2  The  bars  were 
broken,  the  passages  were  stopped,  the  tall  houses  were 
in  flames,  the  fountains  were  dried  up  by  the  heat  of 
the  conflagration.3  The  conquerors,  chiefly  the  fiercer 
mountaineers  from  the  Median  mountains,  dashed 
through  the  terrified  city  like  wild  beasts.  They 
seemed  to  scent  out  blood  for  its  own  sake ;  they  cared 
not  for  the  splendid  metals  that  lay  in  the  Babylonian 
treasure-houses  ;  they  hunted  down  the  fugitives  as  if 
they  were  chasing  deer  or  catching  runaway  sheep.4 
With  their  huge  bows 6  they  cut  in  pieces  the  young 
men  whom  they  encountered  ;  they  literally  fulfilled  the 
savage  wish  of  the  Israelite  captives,  by  seizing  the  in- 
fant children  and  hurling  them  against  the  ground,  till 
they  were  torn  limb  from  limb  in  the  terrible  havoc.6 
A  celestial  sword  flashes  a  first,  a  second,  a  third,  a  fourth, 
and  yet  again  a  fifth  time,  at  each  successive  blow 
sweeping  away  the  Chiefs  of  the  State,  the  idle  boast- 
ers, the  chariots,  the  treasures,  the  waters.7  The  Ham- 
mer of  the  Nations  struck  again  and  again  and  again, 
as  on  the  resounding  anvil  —  and  with  repeated  blows 
beat  down  the  shepherd  as  he  drove  his  flock  through 
the  wide  pasture  of  the  cultivated  spaces,  the  husband- 
man as  he  tilled  the  rich  fields  within  the  walls  with  his 
yoke  of  oxen  —  no  less  than  the  lordly  prince  or  chief. 
The  houses  were  shattered ;  the  walls  with  their  broad 
walks  on  their  tops,  the  gateways  mounting  up  like 
towers,  were  in  flames.8 

1  Jer.  li.  31.  6  Isa.  xiii.  17,  18. 

2  See    Herod,    i.    191;    iii.    158;         6  Psalm  cxxxvii.  8,   9.      Isa.  xiii 
Aj-ist.,  Pol,  iii.  1,12.  16,  18. 

»  Jer.  li.  31,  36.  7  Jer.  1.  35. 

4  Isa.  xiii.  17,  18.  8  Jer.  li.  58. 


Lect.  xlii.  the  capture.  67 

And  yet  more  significant  even  than  the  fall  of  the 
monarchy  and  the  ruin  of  the  city  was  the  overthrow 
of  the  old  religion  of  the  Chaldcean  world  by  the  zeal 
of  the  Persian  monotheists.  The  huge  golden  statue 
of  Bel,  the  Sun-God — from  which  Babylon  itself,  "the 
"  gate  of  Bel,"  derived  its  name  —  on  the  summit  of 
his  lofty  temple;  Nebo,  the  Thoth,  the  Hermes,  the 
God  of  the  Chaldsean  learning,  to  whom  at  least  three 
of  the  Babylonian  kings  were  consecrated  by  name,  in 
his  sanctuary  at  Borsippa,  of  which  the  ruins  still  re- 
main ;  Merodach,  the  tutelary  god  of  the  city,  the  fa- 
vorite deity l  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  "  the  Eldest,  the  most 
"ancient"  of  the  divinities  —  trembled  as  the  Israelites 
believed,  from  head  to  foot,  as  the  great  Iconoclast 
approached.  "  Bel  bowed  down  and  Nebo  stooped,  Me- 
"rodach  is  broken  in  pieces."2  The  High  Priest  might 
stand  out  long  against  the  conquerors,  and  defend  the 
venerated  images  at  the  cost  of  his  life ; 3  they  could 
not  resist  the  destroyer's  shock ;  their  vast  size  did  but 
increase  the  horror,  it  may  be  said,  the  grotesqueness, 
of  their  fall ;  the  beasts  of  burden  on  which  the  broken 
fragments  would  have  to  be  piled  groaned  under  the 
expectation  of  the  weight ;  the  wagons  which  bore 
them  away  creaked  under  the  prospect  of  the  unwieldy 
freight.4  With  the  fall  of  these  greater  divinities,  the 
lesser  fell  also.  In  the  more  cynical  form  of  the  later 
traditions  the  frauds  of  the  selfish  Priesthood  were  ex- 
posed ;  the  monster '  shapes  of  the  old  worship  were 
burst  asunder  by  the  sagacity  of  the  Jewish  captive  and 
the  special  favor  of  the  Persian  king.     But  in  the  an- 

1  Rawlinson,  iii.  459.  account  of  the  Priests  whom  Herod- 

2  Isa.  xlvi.  1.  Jer.  1.  1,  2.  otus  saw,  the  chief  statue  of  Bel 
8  Herod,  i.  183.  remained  till  it  was  destroyed  by 
4  Isa.  xlvi.  1,  2.    According  to  the  Xerxes,  i.  183. 


DO  THE   FALL   OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XLII. 

cient  contemporary  witnesses  there  is  no  such  littleness 
mixed  with  the  proud  exultation,  which  tells  only  how 
in  the  same  general  ruin  all  the  sculptured  figures  came 
clattering  down  and  were  broken  to  fragments.1 

And  where  was  the  King  ?  The  Chalda3an  records 
describe  how  the  Prince  who  had  taken  refuge  at  Bor- 
sippa  was  carried  off  captive  to  the  mountains  of  Cara- 
mania.  But  the  Jewish  records1  know  of  nothing  but 
the  king  who  "  in  that  same  night "  was  slain. 

Belshazzar's  grave  is  made, 
His  kingdom  passed  away. 
He,  in  the  balance  weigh'd, 
Is  light  and  worthless  clay  ; 
The  shroud,  his  robe  of  state; 
His  canopy  the  stone. 
The  Mede 2  is  at  his  gate, 
The  Persian  on  his  throne  ! 

That  same  vivid  description  which  in  the  Book  of  Dan 
iel  tells  how  "  his  countenance  was  changed,  and  his 
"  thoughts  troubled  him,  and  the  joints  of  his  loins  were 
"loosed,  and  his  knees  smote  one  against  another,"3 — ■ 
finds  an  echo  or  a  forecast  in  the  Book  of  Jeremiah,4  — 
"  the  King  of  Babylon  hath  heard  the  report,  and  his 
"  hands  waxed  feeble,  and  anguish  took  hold  of  him, 
"and  pangs  as  of  a  woman  in  travail."  But  there  was 
yet  a  loftier  strain  in  which  (it  may  be,  first  spoken5  of 
the  Ml  of  Sennacherib)  the  captive  Israelites  were  en- 
joined in  the  days  that  they  should  find  "rest  from 
"  their  sorrow  and  their  fear  and  their  hard  bondage  " 
to  take  up  this  ancient  song  against  the  king  of  Baby- 

1  Isa.  xxi.  6.    Dr.  Puscy's  applica-         8  Dan.  v.  6. 
tion  of  Habakkuk  ii.  4-20  to  the  fall         4  Jer.  1.  43. 

of  Babylon,  as  Ewald's  of  Isa.  xxiv.-         5  Isa.  xiv.  4.     For  the  probability 

xxvii.,  must  be  regarded  .is  uncertain,  of  this  "  proverb  "  having  been  first 

2  For  the  vexed  question  of  "  Da-  applied  to  Sennacherib,  see  Lecture 
rius  the  "Mede,"  see  Speaker's  Com-  XXXVIII.  ii.  1  II. 

mentary,  309-314. 


Lect.  XLH.  THE  FATE  OF  BELSHAZZAK.  69 

Ion  and  say:  "How  hath  the  oppressor  ceased,  and 
"  ceased  the  Golden  City !  "  They  should  figure  to 
themselves  the  world  of  shades,  where,  as  in  the  tombs 
of  Egyptian  Thebes,  the  kings  of  the  nations  are  resting 
on  their  thrones  each  in  his  glory.  They  should  imag- 
ine those  dark  regions  stirred  through  all  their  depths 
at  the  approach  of  the  new  comer.  It  is  not  the  feeble 
Belshazzar  or  the  unknown  Nabonadius  that  is  thus 
conceived  as  alarming  those  phantoms  of  the  mighty 
dead.  It  must  be,  if  not  Nebuchadnezzar,  at  last  Nebu- 
chadnezzar's spirit  enshrined  in  his  descendant,  who,  as 
"  the  Last  of  the  Babylonians,"  seems  to  bear  with  him 
all  the  magnificence  of  his  empire.  Down,  down  that 
deep  descent  has  come  his  splendor,  and  his  music  with 
him,  as  in  Ezekiel's  vision  the  heroes  enter  the  lower 
world  with  their  swords  of  state,  as  in  the  Egyptian 
tombs  the  dead  kings  are  surrounded  with  the  harping 
and  the  feasting  of  the  Palaces  they  have  left.1  It  is 
the  Morning 2  Star  of  the  early  dawn  of  the  Eastern  na- 
tions that  has  fallen  from  his  place  in  the  sky.  It  is 
the  giant  who,  like  those  of  old,  would  be  climbing  up 
above  the  clouds,  above  the  stars,  above  the  assembly 
of  Heaven,  on  the  highest  heights  of  the  mountains 
of  the  sacred  North.3  It  is  the  oppressor  who  made 
the  earth  to  tremble,  who  shook  kingdoms,  desolated 
the  world,  and  destroyed  its  cities,  and  opened  not  the 
house  of  his  prisoners.  This  was  he,  on  whom  as  the 
shadows  of  the  departed  looked,  they  saw  that  he  was 

1  Isa.  xiv.  4-11.  the  Evil  Spirit  and  the  modern  Mil- 

2  Isa.  xiv.    12,    13.     This,  which     tonic   doctrine   of    the    fall   of    the 
from  the  Vulgate  is  the  origin  of  the     Angels. 

aanie  of  Lucifer,  was  by  Tertullian  3  Mount  Meru  of   India  —  Olym- 

and    Gregory  the   Great   applied  to  pus  of    Greece  —  Elburz   in  Persia. 

Satan,  and  from  their  mistake  have  See  Gesenius  on  Isaiah  ii.  316-326 
arisen   the  modern  Byronic   title  of 


70  THE  FALL  OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XLII 

become  weak  as  one  of  them  —  this  was  he  (and  here 
the  reference  to  Belshazzar  becomes  more  apposite) 
who  was  laid  in  no  royal  sepulchre,  but  cast  aside 
like  a  withered  branch,  buried  under  the  heaps  of  the 
bleeding  corpses.1 

And  the  city  itself,2  which  to  the  Hebrew  exiles  ap- 
peared like  their  own  beloved  Jerusalem,  in  the  form 
Ruin  of  the  °f  a  stately  Queen  —  the  Daughter,  the  Incar- 
city-  nation,   as   it  were,  of  the  place   itself — the 

Virgin,  the  Impregnable,  Fortress,  she,  too,  crouches 
on  the  dust  with  the  meanest  of  her  slaves :  in  the 
penal  labor  of  grinding  in  the  mill  with  the  lowliest  of 
Eastern  women.  She  has  to  bare  her  limbs,  as  she 
passes  through  her  own  streams ;  she  is  to  sit  silent  and 
pass  into  darkness;  she  shall  no  more  be  called  the 
Lady  of  the  Kingdoms.  The  pride  of  power,  the  pride 
of  science,  alike  are  levelled;  neither  her  astrolo- 
gers nor  her  merchants  can  save  her ;  she  is  become  a 
threshing-floor  —  the  winnowing  fan  shall  sweep  over 
her. 

It  was  a  crash  of  which  the  thunder  resounded  far 
and  near.  "  At  the  noise  of  the  taking  of  Babylon  the 
"  earth  was  moved  as  by  an  earthquake,  and  the  cry 
"was  heard  among  the  nations"  —  "a  sound  of  a  cry 
"  came  from  Babylon,  and  great  destruction  from  the 
"  land  of  the  Chaldaeans." 3  In  every  varying  tone  of 
exultation  and  awe  the  shout  of  triumph  was  raised. 
"How  is  the  Hammer  of  the  whole  earth  rent  asunder 
"  and  broken !  How  is  Babylon  become  a  desolation 
"  among  the  nations !  "  "  How  is  Sheshach  taken ! 
"  How  is  the  praise  of  the  whole  earth  surprised  !  How 
'  is  Babylon  become  an  astonishment  among  the  na- 
'*  tions! "     So  nearer  and  closer  at  hand  the  dirge  went 

1  Isa.  xiv.  16-19.  2  Isa.  xlvii.  1-5.  8  Jer.  li.  54. 


Lect.  XLII. 


RUIN  OF  THE   CITY.  71 


up.  And  yet  more  impressive,  though  with  a  more 
distant  echo,  was  the  cry  of  the  Prophet,  who,  whether 
in  the  anticipations  of  an  earlier  age 1  or  on  the  outpost 
of  some  remote  fortress,  waited  for  "  the  burden  of  the 
"desert  of  the  sea"  —  the  desert  that  surrounded  the 
sea-like  river  which  spread  around  the  great  city.  From 
afar  he  hears  the  rushing  of  a  mighty  storm,  like  the 
whirlwind,  the  simoom  of  the  wilderness.  Then  comes 
the  war-cry  of  Media  and  Persia,  which  in  a  moment 
Lushed,  in  the  deep  stillness  of  thankful  expectation, 
the  sighs  of  the  oppressed  subjects  of  Chaldsea.  His 
heart  thrills  with  the  mingled  delight  and  horror  of  the 
siege  ;  he  sympathises  alternately  with  shuddering  over 
the  fierce  onslaught  of  the  conquerors,  and  with  the  an- 
guish of  the  besieged  city.  At  last  across  the  desert  he 
sees  first  the  long  array  v.f  the  northern  army,  the 
lengthening  columns  of  the  prancing  horse,  and  the 
fierce  Persian  ass,  and  the  swift  dromedary  ;  he  wearies 
with  watching  and  waiting  through  the  long  nights,  like 
the  watchman  in  the  iEschylean  Tragedy,  like  a  hungry 
lion  snuffing  the  prey  from  afar  ;  and  at  last  the  mes- 
sengers draw  nearer,  and  he  sees  distinctly  the  human 
figures  approaching,  and  they  announce  :  "  Babylon  is 
"  fallen,  is  fallen  ;  and  all  the  graven  images  of  her  gods 
He  hath  broken  upon  the  ground." 2 

Babylon  is  fallen.  —  So,  from  mouth  to  mouth,  the 
tidings  flew  through  every  Israelite  community.  Nor 
did  it  die  then.  Six  centuries  after,  when  the  only 
other  empire  and  city  which  in  its  grandeur  and  sig- 
nificance can  be  compared  to  the  ancient  capital  of 
the  primaeval  world  seemed  to  be  drawing  near  to  a 

1  Isa.  xxi.  1-10.    Both  Ewald  and        2  Isa.  xxi.  4-10. 
Gesenius  regard  this  as  previous  to 
the  capture. 


72  THE  FALL  OF  BABYLON.  Lect.  XLLT. 

doom  no  less  terrible,  the  same  word  still  lived  in  the 
mouth  of  another  Jewish  exile,  who,  on  the  rock  oi 
Patmos,  heard  and  repeated  again  with  the  same 
thrill  of  exultation :  "  Babylon  the  Great1  is  fallen, 
is  fallen." 

We  take  breath  for  a  moment  to  ask  what  there  was 
of  transitory  and  what  there  was  of  permanent  instruc- 
tion in  this  catastrophe  and  in  these  utterances  of  the 
Jewish  Prophets  concerning  it.  As  the  author  of  the 
Apocalypse  expected  that,  even  within  his  own  gener- 
ation, "  quickly,  even  so  quickly,"  the  City  on  the  Seven 
Hills  would  be  swept  away  with  all  its  abominations, 
and  would  become  the  habitation  of  demons  and  the 
haunt  of  every  foul  spirit,  and  the  haunt  of  "  every 
"unclean  and  hateful  bird,"  so  and  yet  more  strongly 
did  the  Prophets  of  the  Captivity  expect  and  express, 
in  the  imagery  which  the  Seer  of  Patmos  has  but  re- 
peated, that  the  capture  of  Babylon  would  end  in  its 
immediate  and  total  destruction. 

"It  shall  be  no  more  inhabited  forever;  neither  shall 
"  it  be  dwelt  in  from  generation  to  generation.  .  .  . 
"  No  man  shall  abide  there,  neither  shall  any  son  of  man 
"  dwell  therein."  2  "  Babylon,  the  glory  of  kingdoms,  the 
"beauty  of  the  Chaldees'  excellency,  shall  be  as  when 
"  God  overthrew  Sodom  and  Gomorrah.  It  shall  never 
"  be  inhabited,  neither  shall  it  be  dwelt  in  from  genera- 
"  tion  to  generation ;  neither  shall  the  Arabian  pitch 
"his  tent  there ;  neither  shall  the  shepherds  pitch  their 
"folds  there."3 

No  such  desolation  in  the  literal  sense  followed  on 
the  Persian  conquest.  For  two  centuries  more  Babylon 
remained  to  be  a  flourishing  city,  the  third  in  the 
Empire;  shorn,  indeed,  of  its  splendor,  its  walls  reduced 

1  Rev.  xviii.  2.  2  Jer.  1.  39,  40.  8  Isa.  xiii.  19,  20. 


Lect.  xlii.  its  ruin.  73 

in  height,  its  gates 1  removed,  its  temples  cleared  of  their 
images  (though  even  the  great  statue  of  Bel  remained 
till  pulled  down  by  Xerxes 2),  but  still  the  wonder  of 
the  world,  when  it  was  seen  by  Grecian  travellers  in  the 
next  century,  or  when,  yet  later,  it  was  on  the  verge 
of  reinstatement  in  its  metropolitan  grandeur  by  Alex- 
ander. Then  came  the  fatal  blow  of  the  erection  of 
the  Greek  city  Seleucia  on  the  Tigris ;  and  from  that 
time  the  ancient  capital  withered  away,  till,  in  the  first 
century  of  the  Christian  era,  it  was  but  partially  in- 
habited, still  retaining  within  its  precincts  a  remnant  of 
the  Jewish  settlers.  In  the  fourth  century  it  became  in 
great  measure  a  hunting-park  for  the  Persian  Kings, 
but  its  irrigation  still  kept  up  the  fertile  and  populous 
character  of  the  district.  It  was  not  till 3  the  Middle 
Ages,  when  a  Jewish  traveller  (Benjamin  of  Tudela) 
once  more  visited  the  ruins,  that  it  was  seen  in  the  state 
in  which  it  has  been  ever  since  —  a  wide  desert  track, 
interrupted  only  by  the  huge  masses  of  indestructible 
brick,  its  canals  broken,  its  rich  vegetation  gone ;  so 
literally  the  habitation  of  the  lions,  the  jackals,  the  an- 
telopes of  the  surrounding  desert  that,  alone  of  the 
many  pictures  of  ruin  which  the  Prophets  foreshadowed 
for  the  enemies  of  their  country,  this  has,  after  a  delay 
of  sixteen  centuries,  and  now  for  a  period  of  seven  cen- 
turies, been  almost  literally4  accomplished.  Damascus 
and  Tyre,  though  menaced  with  a  desolation  no  less 
complete,  have  never  ceased  to  be  inhabited  towns 
more  or  less  frequented.  Petra  is  again  the  resort  of 
yearly  visitors.     It  is  true,  that  even  Babylon  has  never 

1  Herod,  iii.  159.  4  Rich,   Preface,   xlvi.      So   Cyril 

2  Herod,  i.  183.  of  Alexandria  (Layard's  Nineveh  and 
8  See  the  authorities  collected  in     Babylon,  534,  565). 

St.  Croix,  or  Rich's  Memoir. 
10 


74  THE   FALL  OF   BABYLON.  Lect.  XLI1 

ceased  to  be  inhabited.  Hillah,  a  town  with  a  popula- 
tion of  five  thousand  souls,  is  within  its  walls,  and  the 
Arabs  still  wander  through  it.  But  in  its  general 
aspect  the  modern  traveller  can  add  nothing  to  the 
forebodings  of  the  Hebrew  Prophets. 

The  marshes,1  as  of  a  sea,  spread  round  it  — "  the 
"  pools  for  bitterns"  take  the  place  of  its  well-ordered 
canals.  "  The  wild  beasts  of  the  desert  lie  there  ;  their 
"  houses  are  full  of  doleful  creatures ;  ostriches  dwell 
"  there ;  and  the  demons 2  that  haunt  the  wilderness 
"  dance  there,  and  the  wild-cats  scream  in  their  deso- 
"  late  houses,  and  jackals  in  their  pleasant  palaces." 

The  time  and  the  extent  of  the  predicted  destruction 
were  not  fulfilled.  But  it  is  remarkable  that  the  ul- 
timate result  should  so  long  before  have  been  so  nearly 
described.  It  is  a  yet  more  signal  instance  of  insight 
into  the  true  nature  of  the  catastrophe  that,  though 
this  outward  manifestation  of  its  extreme  consequences 
should  have  been  so  persistently  delayed,  its  moral  and 
essential  character  was  caught  from  the  first.  Not  more 
The  min  ;ompletely  than  the  physical  Babylon  has  per- 
pire.  ished   by  the  insensible    operation  of  natural 

laws,  did  the  Imperial  Babylon,  the  type  and  imperson- 
ation of  the  antique  world,  expire  on  the  night  that 
Belshazzar  fell.  In  a  solemn  figure,  indeed,  she  lived 
again  in  the  City  of  the  Seven  Hills,  as  the  nearest  like- 
ness which  later  history  has  seen.  She  lives  again,  in 
a  more  remote  and  partial  sense,  in  the  great  capitals 
of  modern  civilization.     But,  in  all  that  was  peculiar  to 

1  Rich,  Preface,  xlvi.  So  Cyril  of  ered  by  the  LXX.  Sai/iSvia,  and  by 
Alexandria  (Layard's  Nineveh  and  our  version  very  properly  "  satyrs  ") 
Babylon,  534,  565).  still,  according  to  the  Arab  tradition, 

2  Isa.  xiii.  21,  22.  It  is  a  curious  haunt  the  shores  of  the  Euphrates  — 
nstance  of  the  persistency  of  an  an-  figures  with  human  heads  and  hairy 
^ient  fancy  that  the  creatures  (rend-  thighs  and  legs  (Rich,  76). 


Lect.  XLH  ITS  RUIN.  i  5 

herself,  the  Queen  of  the  East  was  dead  and  buried. 
"  Babylon  *  as  a  sovereign  empire  was  put  down  for 
"  ever  by  the  Persian  Conquest.  Its  influence  as  an 
"  active  element  in  determining  the  fate  of  other  na- 
"  tions  was  stopped  at  once.  Moral  and  intellectual 
"  results  in  Asia  have  been  only  or  chiefly  effected 
"  through  the  action  of  physical  power.  '  Grsecia 
'■  '  capta  ferum  victorem  cepit,'  as  one  of  the  pecul- 
iarities of  the  history  of  Europe.  Babylon  science, 
"  or  art,  or  religion  became  powerless  over  the  world 
"when  the  sceptre  of  Babylonian  dominion  was  broken. 
"  The  genius  of  Babylon  had  received  a  deadly  wound 
"  —  he  drooped  for  a  while  and  died." 

But  this  is  not  the  permanent  or  only  thought  left 
on  the  mind  of  the  Jewish  captives  by  the  fall  The  king- 
of  the  Old  World.  We  know  not  whether  Heaven. 
already  in  their  days  there  had  sprung  up  the  legend 
which  to  the  pilgrim  whom  modern  curiosity  attracts  to 
the  wreck  of  Babylon  contrasts  so  forcibly  the  vitality 
of  that  which  is  immortal  in  human  history  and  the 
mutability  of  that  which  is  mortal.  Face  to  face  on 
the  plain  stand  two  huge  fragments  of  ruin,  in  one  of 
which  the  Arab  wanderers  see  the  Palace  of  Nimrod, 
and  in  the  other  the  furnace  into  which  Abraham  was 
cast  for  denying  his  divinity.  In  like  manner  it  was  the 
Hebrew  belief  that  in  the  last  days  of  the  Babylonian 
Empire  the  marvellous  sage  who  had  seen  and  inter- 
preted those  vast  vicissitudes  foretold,  with  unwavering 
confidence,  that  out  of  them  all  the  God  of  Heaven 
would  set  up  a  kingdom  which  should  never  be  de- 
stroyed, but  which  should  stand  forever 2 —  a  dominion 
of  the  Ancient  of  Days,  which  is  an  "  everlasting  domin- 

1  Arnold's  Sermons  on  Prophecy,         2  Daa.  ii.  45. 

40. 


76  THE   FALL   OF   BABYLON.  Lect.  XLIL 

"  ion,  a  dominion  which  shall  not  pass  away,  and  his 
"  kingdom  that  which  shall  not  be  destroyed."  1  And 
to  him  it  was  said :  "  Go  thou  thy  way  till  the  end  be ; 
"  for  thou  shalt  rest  and  stand  in  thy  lot  at  the  end  of 
"  the  days."  2  The  aged  Daniel  was,  according  to  the 
Biblical  conception,  the  eternal  and  mysterious  Israelite 
whose  experience  seemed  to  have  covered  the  whole 
course  of  that  eventful  age  —  the  Apocalyptic  Seer, 
who  would  revive  again  in  the  nation's  utmost  need, 
"  tarrying  till  the  Lord  come." 

It  was  the  first  announcement  of  a  "  kingdom  of 
"Heaven,"  that  is  of  a  power  not  temporal,  with  the 
rule  of  kings  or  priests,  but  spiritual,  with  the  rule  of 
mind  and  conscience  —  "  cut  out  of  the  mountain  with- 
out hands." 

And  in  the  same  tone,  but  still  more  certainly  speak- 
ing the  spirit  of  that  time,  was  the  voice  which  came 
from  the  Evangelical  Prophet,  to  whom,  as  has  been 
well  said,  the  nation  of  Israel  was  an  Eternal  People,3 
in  a  far  higher  sense  than  that  in  which  either  Babylon 
or  Rome  was  an  Eternal  City,  because  it  contained 
within  itself  the  seed  of  the  spiritual  life  of  mankind. 
That  voice  said  "  Cry,"  and  he  said  "  What  shall  I 
"cry?"  "All"  flesh4  is  grass,  and  all  the  gooclliness 
"  thereof  as  the  flower  of  the  field ;  the  grass  with- 
"  ercth,  the  flower  fadeth."  Thus  far  he  partook  in 
the  sentiment  which,  in  later  times,  has  seen  in  the  de- 
cadence of  empires  and  churches  the  symptoms  of  the 
approaching  dissolution  of  the  world.  But  in  the  same 
moment   his   spirit  "  disdains  and   survives "   this  de- 

1  Dan.   vii.    14.      These    are   the         2  Dan.  xii.  13. 
words  which,  written  over  the  port-         8  Ewald,  v.  47. 
ico  of  the  church  of  Damascus,  once        *  Isa.  xl.  6-8. 
a  temple,  now  a  mosque,  still  signifi- 
cantly survive. 


Lect.  xlii.  its  ruin.  77 

spondency,  and  he  looks  forward  to  a  remote  future,  in 
which  the  moral  and  Divine  elements  of  the  course  of 
human  affairs  shall  outlive  all  temporary  shocks,  and 
adds,  with  an  emphasis  which  is  the  key-note  of  his 
whole  prophecy,  "  But  the  word  of  our  God  shall  stand 
forever." 


NOTE  ON  THE  DATE  OF  THE  BOOK  OF  DANIEL. 


In  discussing  the  date  of  any  book  we  must  carefully  separate  the  time  of 
the  events  and  characters  portrayed  in  it,  whether  historical  or  fictitious, 
from  the  time  when  the  book  itself  was  produced.  The  events  of  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  remain  unquestionably  part  of  the  history  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  though  they  have  been  described  and  colored  by  the  genius  and 
the  passion  of  Schiller,  who  lived  more  than  a  hundred  years  afterward. 
The  characters  and  state  of  society  represented  in  "  Ivanhoe  "  belong  to  the 
twelfth  century,  though  they  are  seen  through  the  medium  of  the  art  and 
sentiment  of  the  nineteenth.  It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  this  obvious 
distinction,  because,  in  treating  of  the  Biblical  writings,  it  is  often  forgot- 
ten. The  fixed  idea  of  the  ancient  Jewish  and  Christian  theologians  was 
that  every  book  was  written,  if  not  at  the  actual  time  of  all  the  events  re- 
lated in  it,  at  least  at  the  time  and  by  the  pen  of  the  chief  person  to  whose 
deeds  it  refers,  —  the  Books  of  Moses  by  Moses,  of  Joshua  by  Joshua,  of 
Samuel  by  Samuel,  of  Job  by  Job,  of  Esther  by  Mordecai.  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  has  often  been  maintained  by  later  writers  that  it  is  sufficient 
to  destroy  the  value  or  the  contemporaneousness  of  traditions  if  it  can  be 
proved  that  they  first  appeared  in  their  present  form  a  century  or  two  cen- 
turies later.  It  is  to  be  lamented  that  a  double-edged  weapon  of  this  kind, 
which  has  long  ago  been  laid  aside  in  secular  criticism,  should  still  be  used 
on  either  side  in  sacred  literature.  Of  this  the  controversy  respecting  the 
Book  of  Daniel  is  a  memorable  example.  It  has  been  urged,  both  by  those 
who  arrogate  to  themselves  the  title  of  the  defenders,  as  also  by  some  of 
those  who  are  accounted  assailants,  of  the  book,  that  its  whole  interest 
would  disappear  if  it  were  proved  to  have  been  composed  in  its  present  form 
by  any  one  except  Daniel. 

There  is  much  which  still  remains  doubtful  respecting  this  mysterious 
book.  But  it  may  be  granted  on  all  sides  that,  as  it  is  now  received  in  its 
larger  form  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  versions  of  the  Hebrew,  or  even  in  the 
shorter  form  which  it  bears  in  the  Hebrew,  there  are  traditions  of  unequal 
value,  some  of  them  unquestionably  of  the  period  of  the  Captivity,  some  of  a 


78  DATE   OF  THE  BOOK  OF  DANIEL.         Lect.  XLII 

later  date,  some,  as  Ewald  and  Bunsen  supposed,  reaching  to  an  earlier  age, 
even  than  the  Babylonian  Empire. 

This  is  now  so  generally  acknowledged  that  it  need  not  be  argued  at 
length.  Even  Lengerke,  who  maintained  (Das  Buck  Daniel,  p.  xcv.)  that  it 
is  entirely  poetical,  admits  that  there  must  have  been  an  historical  charac- 
ter to  whom  the  Prophet  Ezekiel  refers  ;  and  many  of  his  objections  to  the 
accuracy  of  the  Chaldaean  coloring  have  been  answered. 

But  the  date  of  the  composition  of  the  book  as  a  whole  is  still  much  con- 
tested. It  is  well  known  that  after  the  final  reception  (at  whatever  period) 
of  the  Book  of  Daniel  into  the  Canon,  the  theory  of  its  later  date  was  ad- 
vanced by  Porphyry,  in  the  third  century  of  the  Christian  era,  chiefly  on 
the  trround  that  it  contains  a  description  of  historical  events  down  to  a  cer- 
tain period,  after  which  its  exact  delineations  suddenly  cease.  From  that 
time  till  the  seventeenth  century  the  question  was  not  stirred.  The  as- 
sumption prevailed  everywhere,  as  with  regard  to  the  Books  of  Moses, 
Joshua,  Samuel,  that  the  book  was  written  by  the  person  whose  name  it 
bore.  When  the  objections  of  Porphyry  have  since  been  from  time  to  time 
started  afresh,  the  reply  has  often  been  that  they  are  merely  Porphyry's  old 
objections  reappearing.  On  this  rejoinder  it  was  once  remarked  by  a  vener- 
able scholar  and  divine  of  our  day  :  "  They  have  always  reappeared  because 
"  they  have  never  been  answered."  This  is  substantially  true,  and  it  may 
be  well  briefly  to  enumerate  the  general  grounds  on  which  rests  the  con- 
currence of  critics  so  authoritative  as  Bentley,  Arnold,  Milman,  and  Thirl- 
wall  in  England  ;  as  Gesenius,  Ewald,  Bleek,  De  Wette,  Kuenen,  on  the 
Continent. 

The  linguistic  arguments,  drawn  from  the  nature  of  the  Hebrew  or 
Chaldee  words  used,  we  may  put  aside  as  too  minute  and  too  doubtful  to  be 
insisted  on  ;  as  also  the  arguments  drawn  from  the  improbabilities  of  the 
story,  because  they  led  into  too  large  a  field  of  speculative  argument,  and 
also  because,  for  the  most  part,  they  do  not,  properly  speaking  (as  has  been 
before  said),  affect  the  date  of  the  narrative. 

We  may  confine  ourselves  to  those  which  appear  on  either  side  to  have  any 
decisive  weight. 

I.  The  arguments  for  the  late  composition  of  the  book  («.  e.  b.  c.  168— 
164)  are  partly  external  and  partly  internal. 

„  ,  1.  The  external  arguments  are  as  follows  :  — 

External  _  ,  .      ,     __  ,  „  .  .     .  ^       , 

argu-  (a.)  It  is  not  arranged  in  the  Hebrew  Canon  with  the  "  Proph- 

ments.  "  ets,"  but  with  the  miscellaneous  "  Ilagiographa "  *  (the 

Psalms,  Proverbs,  Job,  Ecclesiastes,  Canticles,  Ezra,  Nehe- 
miah,  and  Chronicles),  i.  e.  the  part  avowedly  of  later  date 
and  lesser  authority,  and  constantly  receiving  fresh  addi- 
tions.    See  Lectures  XLVIL,  XL VIII. 

i  This  exclusion  of   Daniel  from     matter    of    bitter     complaint    with 
he  "  Prophets  "  by  the  Jews  was  a     Theodoret,  1056,  1057. 


IjacT.  XLII.  INTERNAL  ARGUMENTS.  79 

(6.)  Daniel  is  not  mentioned  by  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Zacbwiah, 
Haggai,  nor  in  the  catalogue  of  worthies  by  the  Son  of  Si- 
rach  (Ecclus.  xlix.  8,  9,  10),  which  is  the  more  remarkable 
from  his  mention  of  all  the  other  Prophets.  The  only 
counterpoise  to  the  argument  for  this  omission  is  that  in 
Ecclus.  xlix.  13,  Ezra  is  left  out. 

(c.)  The  Greek  translation  of  the  book  is  involved  in  obscurity. 
In  the  place  of  that  of  the  LXX.  was  substituted,  for  some 
unknown  reason  ("  hoc  cur  acciderit  nescio,"  says  Jerome), 
a  translation  by  Theodotion  ;  and  both  are  inextricably 
mixed  up  with  Greek  additions,  which,  though  part  of  the 
Canon  of  the  Eastern  and  of  the  Latin  Churches,  have  been 
rejected  by  the  Protestant  Churches,  and  one  of  which  (the 
History  of  Susannah)  is  apparently  of  Greek  origin,  as  may 
be  inferred  from  the  play  on  two  Greek  words  (Susanna 
55,  59). 

2.  The  internal  arguments  are  as  follows  : —  Internal  Ar- 

guments. 

(a.)    The    use   of   Greek    words  KiBapa  and   (ra/x^vKij, 

a-v^eaivla  and  ^a\Tt\pwv,  in  the  Hebrew  of  iii.  5,  7,  10.  In 
the  case  of  KiSdpa  the  argument  is  strengthened  by  the  fact 
that  in  Ezek.  xxvi.  13,  and  Psalm  cxxxvi.  2  (unquestiona- 
bly of  the  epoch  of  Captivity)  the  word  for  "  harp  "  is  still 
kinnur. 

(6.)  The  difficulty  of  reconciling  much  of  the  story  as  it  now  stands 
with  Ezekiel's  mention  of  Daniel  as  on  a  level  with  Noah 
and  Job,  and  as  an  oracle  of  wisdom  (xiv.  14,  xxviii.  3), 
when,  according  to  Dan.  i.  1,  he  must  have  been  a  mere 
youth. 

(c.)  The  matter-of-fact  descriptions  of  the  leagues  and  conflicts 
between  the  Graeco- Syrian  and  Grfeco-Egyptian  Kings,  and 
of  the  reign  of  Antiochus  IV.,  in  Dan.  xi.  1-45  ;  which,  if 
written  300  years  before  that  time,  would  be  without  paral- 
lel or  likeness  in  Hebrew  prophecy.  These  descriptions 
are  minute,  with  the  minuteness  of  a  contemporary  chroni- 
cler, and  many  of  their  details  lack  any  particle  of  moral 
spiritual  interest  such  as  might  account  for  so  signal  a  viola- 
tion (if  so  be)  of  the  style  of  Biblical  prophecy.  This,  ac- 
cordingly, is  the  chief  argument  for  fixing  the  date  of  the 
book  at  the  time  when  these  conflicts  occurred  —  an  argu- 
ment which,  in  the  case  of  any  other  book  (as,  for  example, 
the  ' '  Sibylline  Oracles  ' '  or  the  Book  of  Enoch) ,  would  be 
conclusive. 

On  the  side  of  the  earlier  date  (i.  e.  b.  c.  570-536)  the  external  argu- 
ments are  as  follows  :  — 


80  DATE  OF  THE  BOOK  OF  DANIEL.  Lect.  XLII. 

(a.)  The  assertion  of  Joseplius  {Ant.  xi.  8)  that  Jaddua  showed  to 
Alexander  the  predictions  of  his  conquests  in  the  Book  of 
Daniel.  But  the  doubt  which  rests  over  the  story  generally, 
and  the  acknowledged  incorrectness  of  some  of  its  details 
(see  Dr.  Westcott  in  Dictionary  of  the  Bible  ["Alexan- 
der"], and  Lecture  XL VII.)  deprive  this  allusion  of 
serious  weight ;  and  it  is  difficult  not  to  suspect  something 
of  an  apologetic  tone  in  Joseph.  Ant.  x.  11,  7 — "  Me- 
"  thinks  the  historian  doth  protest  too  much." 

(5.)  The  allusion  to  the  furnace  and  the  lions'  den  in  the  dying 
speech  of  Mattathias,  a.  d.  167  (1  Mace.  ii.  59,  60).  But 
this  (granting  the  exact  accuracy  of  the  report  of  the  speech 
of  Mattathias),  in  a  book  written  as  late  as  b.  c.  107  — 
therefore  certainly  after  the  publication  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel  on  any  hypothesis  —  does  not  testify  to  more  than 
the  previous  existence  of  the  traditions  of  these  events,  of 
which  there  need  be  no  question. 

(c.)  The  reference  in  the  Received  Text  of  two  of  the  Gospels  to 
the  Book  of  "  Daniel  the  Prophet."  But  the  force  of  this 
reference  is  weakened  by  the  omission  of  the  name  in  the 
Syriac  version  of  Matt.  xxiv.  15,  and  by  its  entire  absence 
from  the  best  MSS.  of  Mark  xiii.  14,  and  in  all  the  MSS.  of 
Luke  xxi.  24.  And,  under  any  circumstances,  it  would 
only  prove,  what  is  not  doubted,  that  at  the  time  of  the 
Christian  era  the  book  had  been  received  into  the  Canon  — 
in  Palestine,  without  the  Greek  additions  ;  at  Alexandria, 
with  them. 

The  internal  arguments  in  favor  of  the  earlier  date  rest  on  the  exactness 
of  the  references  to  Chaldasan  usages,  and  of  coincidence  with  the  monu- 
mental inscriptions.  These  arguments  are  carefully  given  in  Dr.  Pusey's 
Lectures  on  "  Daniel  the  Prophet  "(Lecture  VII.),  and  yet  more  elaborately 
in  Mr.  Fuller's  notes  on  Daniel  in  the  "  Speaker's  Commentary."  Of  the 
coincidences  with  the  Babylonian  monuments,  the  most  striking  is  the  name 
of  Bil-shar-uzur  as  an  equivalent  to  Belshazzar,  which,  before  the  recent 
discovery  of  this  word  at  Babylon,  was  not  known  except  from  Daniel.  On 
the  other  hand,  Darius  the  Mede  is  still  an  unsolved  enigma.  But  if  we  ac- 
cept (with  most  of  the  critics  who  have  advocated  the  later  date)  the  exist- 
ence of  Babylonian  traditions,  or  even  documents  incorporated  in  the  book, 
this  exactness  of  allusion,  whilst  it  adds  to  the  interest  of  the  work,  and  re- 
moves an  argument  sometimes  used  for  its  Maccabajan  origin,  does  not 
prove  its  early  composition,  any  more  than  the  use  of  unquestionably  ancient 
traditions  and  narratives  precludes  the  unquestionably  Macedonian  date 
(see  Lecture  XL VII.)  of  the  Books  of  Chronicles. 

The  result  is,  therefore,  that  the  arguments  incline  largely  to  the  side 
•»f  the  latter  date  ;    and  this  result  is  strengthened  by  the  consideration 


Lect.  xlh.  conclusion.  81 

(1)  that  though  something  may  be  said  to  attenuate  the  force  of  each  argu- 
ment singly,  yet  each  derives  additional  weight  from  the  collective  weight 
of  all  ;  and  (2)  that  the  objections  raised  by  some  of  them  pass  over  almost 
or  altogether  the  most  conclusive,  no  parallel  instance  having  been  adduced 
from  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  to  the  details  of  the  eleventh  chapter,  nor  any 
explanation  of  such  an  exception  from  the  general  style  of  Biblical  Proph- 
ecy. 

Accordingly,  the  course  followed  in  these  Lectures  has  been,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  give  the  incidents  relating  to  the  Captivity,  whether  in  the  Greek 
or  Hebrew  or  Chaldee  parts  of  Daniel,  in  connection  with  the  scenes  to 
which  they  refer,  indicating  that  the  authority  on  which  they  rest  is  inferior 
to  that  of  the  contemporary  prophets  and  historians  ;  and,  on  the  othei 
hand,  to  reserve  those  parts  which  handle  the  Macedonian  history  to  tha 
period  to  which  they  belong,  and  in  which,  probably,  they  were  written. 
11 


THE   PERSfAN  DOMINION. 


Cyrus,  b.  c.  560. 

Fall  of -Babylon,  b.  c.  538. 

The  Return,  b.  c.  536. 
Cambyses,  b.  c.  529. 
Darius  L,  b.  c.  522. 

Completion  of  the  Temple,  b.  c.  516. 
Xerxes,  b.  c.  485. 

Story  of  Esther,  B.  c.  480-490? 
Artaxerxes,  b.  c.  465. 

Coming  of  Ezra,  b.  c.  459. 

Coming  of  Nehemiah,  b.  c.  415. 

Secession  of  Manasseh,  b.  c.  419. 

Malachi,  b.c.  400? 


LECTURE   XLIIL 

THE   RETURN. 

SPECIAL   AUTHORITIES. 

(1)  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi. 

(2)  Ezrai.-vi. 

(3)  Psalms  cvii.-cl. 

(4)  Haggai. 

(5)  Zechariah  i.-viiL 

TRADITIONS. 

1  Esdras  ii.-vii. 
Josephns  Ant.  xi.  1-4. 

Seder  Olam,  pp.  107,  108  (with  comments  of  Derembourg,  Histoid 
de  la  Palestine,  pp.  19.  20,  211. 


PALESTINE  AFTER  THE  RETURN 


~~'i                        c. 

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a 

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Samaria^    oSh,,cfiem{ 

< 

The  mil  country  qfJudcea 
hetilby  tit,  Tdumaans 


1U   5     0  10        20 


r     i)    r     mwa     e     a 


THE   PERSIAN   DOMINION. 


LECTURE   XLIII. 

THE  RETURN. 

The  Return  from  the  Captivity  opens  the  final  era 
of  the  history  of  the  Jewish  Church  and  Nation.  That 
any  nation  should  have  survived  such  a  dislocation  and 
dissolution  of  all  local  and  social  bonds  is  almost  with- 
out example.  But  as  in  the  case  of  the  Greek  race 
centuries  of  foreign  dominion  have  been  unable  to 
eradicate  the  memory  of  their  distant  glory,  so  in  the 
case  of  the  Israelites,  their  transplantation  to  another 
country  was  unable  to  efface  the  religious *  aspiration 
which  was  the  bond  of  their  national  coherence.  The 2 
other  Semitic  tribes,  Moab,  Ammon,  Edom,  felt  that 
with  the  loss  of  their  home  they  would  lose  all.  Israel 
alone  survived. 

The  Restoration  was  an  event  which,  unlikely  and 
remote  as  it  might  have  seemed,  was  deemed  almost  a 
certainty  in  the  expectations  of  the  exiles.  The  con- 
fidence of  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  never  flagged  that 
within  two  generations  from  the  beginning  of  the  Cap- 
tivity their  countrymen  would  return.  The  patriotic 
sentiment,  which  had  existed  as  it  were  unconsciously 
before,  found  its  first  definite  expression  at  this  period. 
The  keen  sense  as  of  personal  anguish  at  the  overthrow 

1  See  Milman,  History  of  the  Jews,  ing  remarks  upon  it  by  Mr.  Grove  in 
i.  404,  405.  the  Diet,  of  Bible,  ii.  397,  398. 

a  Jer.  xlviiL  11.     See  the  interest- 


86  TIIE    RETURN. 


Lect.  XLIII 


of  Jerusalem  poured  forth  in  the  Lamentations — the 
touching *  cry,  "  If  I  forget  thee,  0  Jerusalem,  may 
"  my  right  hand  forget  herself"  —  the  clinging 2  to  the 
remembrance  of  the  very  dust  and  stones  of  Jerusalem, 
■ —  the  face  8  in  prayer  directed  towards  Jerusalem,  — 
the  earnest  supplication  for  the  Holy  Nation  and  the 
Holy  City,  kept  alive  the  flame  which  from  this  time 
never  died  till  it  was  extinguished  under  the  ruins  of 
The  joy  of  their  country  in  the  final  overthrow  by  Titus, 
he  Return.  j^n^  when  the  day  at  last  arrived  which  was  to 
see  their  expectations  fulfilled,  the  burst  of  joy  was 
such  as  has  no  parallel  in  the  sacred  volume  ;  it  is  in- 
deed the  Revival,  the  Second  Birth,  the  Second  Exodus 
of  the  nation.  There  was  now  "  a  new  song,"  of  which 
the  burden  was  that  the  Eternal4  again  reigned  over 
the  earth,  and  that  the  gigantic  idolatries  which  sur- 
rounded them  had  received  a  deadly 5  shock ;  that 6 
the  waters  of  oppression  had  rolled  back  in  which  they 
had  been  struggling  like  drowning  men  ;  that  the 
snare  7  was  broken  in  which  they  had  been  entangled 
like  a  caged  bird.  It  was  like  a  dream,8  too  good  to 
be  true.  The  gayety,  the  laughter  of  their  poetry, 
resounded  far  and  wide.  The  surrounding  nations 
could  not  but  confess  what  great  things  had  been  done 
^3  for  them.9     It  was  like  the  sudden  rush  of  the 

Psalms".  waters  into  the  dry  torrent-beds  of  the  south 
of  Palestine^  or  of  the  yet  extremer  south,  of  which 
they  may  have  heard,  in  far  Ethiopia.10     It  was  like 

1  Psalm  cxxxvii.  5  (Heb.)  7  Psalm  cxxiv.  5. 

2  Psalm  cii.  14.  8  Psalm  cxxvi.  1. 
8  Dan.  vi.  10,  ix.  16-19.                         •  Psalm  cxxvi.  2. 

4  Psalm  xcvi.   1,  4,  5;   xcvii.  1;         10  Psalm  cxxvi.  4.     Comp.  Sir  S. 

vux.  1.  Baker's  description  of   the  flooding 

6  Psalm  xcvii.  7;  xcix.  8.  of  the  dry  bed  of  the  Atbara. 
*  Psalm  cxxiv.  4. 


Lect.  XLIII. 


ITS  JOYOUSNESS.  8' 


the  reaper  bearing  on  his  shoulder  the  golden  sheaves 
in  summer  which  he  had  sown  amongst  the  tears  of 
winter.  So  full  were  their  hearts,  that  all  nature  was 
called  to  join  in  their  thankfulness.  The  *  vast  rivers 
of  their  new  Mesopotamian  home,  and  the  waves  of  the 
Indian  Ocean,  are  to  take  part  in  the  chorus,  and  clap 
their  foaming  crests  like  living  hands.  The  mountains 
of  their  own  native  land  are  invited  to  express  their 
joy ;  each  tree 2  in  the  forests  that  clothed  the  hills,  or 
that  cast  their  shade  over  the  field,  is  to  have  a  tongue 
for  the  occasion. 

In  accordance  with   these    strains  of  the  Psalmists 
there  was  the  Prophetic  announcement  of  the  TheEvau- 

.  gelieal 

beginning  of  the  new  epoch  m  words  which,  Prophet, 
whilst  they  vibrate  with  a  force  beyond  their  own  time, 
derive  their  original  strength  from  the  circumstances 
of  their  first  utterance,  and  which  gave  to  their 
unknown  author,  who  thus  "comforted3  them  that 
"  mourned  in  Sion,"  the  name  of  the  Prophet  of  glad 
tidings.  "Comfort4  ye,  my  people,  saith  your  God. 
"Speak  unto  Jerusalem  that  her  warfare  is  accom- 
"  plished,  that  her  iniquity  is  pardoned,  for  she  hath 
"  received  at  God's  hand  the  double  for  all  her  woe." 
"A  voice  cries,  Through  the  wilderness  prepare  the 
"way  of  the  Eternal,  make  smooth  in  the  desert  a 
"  highway  for  our  God.  Every  valley  shall  be  exalted, 
"  every  mountain  and  hill  shall  be  made  low,  and  the 
"  crooked  shall  be  made  straight,  and  the  rough  places 
''  plain,  and  the  glory  of  the  Eternal  shall  be  revealed, 

<  and  all  flesh  shall  see  it  together,  for  the  mouth  of 

'  the  Eternal  hath  spoken  it." 
That  opening  strain  of  the  Prophet,   so  full  of  the 

1  Psalm  xcviii.  7,  8.  8  Ecclesiasticus  xlviii.  24. 

8  Psalm  xcvi.  12.  4  Isa.  xl.  1.  (Heb.). 


88  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLIIL 

great  Evangelical  truth,  —  Evangelical  in  its  literal 
sense  and  true  to  the  depths  of  human  nature,  —  that 
nations  and  individuals  alike  can  leave  their  past  be- 
hind them,  and  start  afresh  in  the  race  of  duty ;  so  im- 
pressive from  its  peculiar  historical  significance  as  the 
key-note  of  the  new  period  of  Asiatic  and  European 1 
history;  so  striking  in  the  imagery  with  which  it 
figures  that  Divine  progress  —  demanding  for  its  ap- 
proach and  preparation  the  reduction  of  pride,  the  ex- 
altation of  humility,  the  simplification  of  the  tortuous, 
the  softening  of  the  angular  and  harsh  —  was  heard 
in  part  once  again  when  long  afterwards  in  the  wild2 
thickets  of  the  Jordan  a  voice  was  raised  inaugurating 
another  new  epoch,  and  preparing  the  way  for  another 
vaster  revolution  in  nations  and  in  churches.  But 
nevertheless  the  whole  expression  of  the  exhortation 
breathes  the  atmosphere  of  the  moment 3  when  it  was 
first  delivered  —  the  sense  of  the  expected  deliverance 
at  last  come  —  the  heart  of  an  oppressed  people  again 
breathing  freely  —  the  long  prospect  of  the  journey  yet 
before  them,  through  the  trackless  desert  —  all  irra- 
diated with  the  hope  that  no  wilderness  would  be  too 

1  See  Lectures  XL.  XLII.  only  used  on  incidental  occasions  in 

2  Matt.  iii.  3;  Mark  i.  3.  In  this  the  Greek  Church.  In  the  Sunday 
application  of  Isa.  xl.  3,  the  words  services  of  the  Church  of  England 
"in  the  wilderness"  have  been  sepa-  this  splendid  chapter  was  almost 
rated  from  their  proper  context;  and  pointedly  excluded  till  the  revision 
also  the  word  which  properly  de-  of  the  English  Calendar  of  Lessons 
scribes  the  Mesopotamia^  desert  has  in  1872.  It  is  to  its  selection  as  the 
been  transferred  to  the  wild  country  opening  of  Handel's  "  Messiah  " 
of  the  Jordan.  The  grand  prelude  that  it  owes  its  proper  position  be- 
of  this  new  prophecy  has  Buffered  a  fore  Christendom. 

singular  eclipse.     Its  words  escaped  8  In  Josephus,  Ant.,  xi.   1,  these 

citation  in  the  New  Testament.     In  prophecies  under  the  name  of  Isaiah 

later   times   the  whole  passage   has  are  substituted  for  those  of  Jeremiah 

been  entirely  omitted  in  the  public  given  in  the  earlier  account  of  Ezra 

services  of   the  Latin    Church,  and  i.  1. 


Lect.  xlih.  its  significance.  89 

arid,  no  hills  too  high,  no  ravine  *  too  deep  for  the  Di- 
vine Providence  to  surmount. 

Another  utterance  of  the  same  Prophet  is  still  more 
directly  fitted  to  the  emergency  of  his  own  time, 
though  still  more  sacredly  associated  with  the  mighty 
future.  "  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  God  rests  upon  me, 
"  because  the  Eternal  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  good 
"  tidings  unto  the  suffering,  He  hath  sent  me  to  bind 
"  up  the  broken-hearted,  to  proclaim  liberty  to  the 
"  captives,  and  the  opening  of  the  prison  to  them  that 
"  are  bound  ;  to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the 
"  Eternal." 

It  was  five  centuries  onwards  that  in  the  synagogue 
of  a  hitherto  unknown  Jewish  village  the  scroll 

?  .  B.C.  536. 

which  contained  the  writings  which  by  that  time 
were  all  comprised  under  the  one  name  of  the  Prophet 
Isaiah  was  handed  to  a  young  Teacher,2  who  unfolded 
the  roll  and  found  the  place  where  it  was  thus  written. 
He  closed  the  book  at  the  point  where  the  special  appli- 
cation to  the  Israelite  exiles  began.  He  fixed  the  at- 
tention of  His  audience  only  on  these  larger  words 
which  enabled  Him  to  say  to  all  those  whose  eyes  were 
fastened  on  His  gracious  countenance,  "  This  day  is  this 
"  Scripture  fulfilled  in  your  ears."  But  the  original 
fulfilment  of  the  consolation  was  that  contemplated  by 
the  Prophet  who  saw  before  him  the  exiles  depart  in 
their  holiday  attire  for  their  homeward  journey;  des- 
tined to  strike  root  again  like  the  sturdy  ilex  of  their 
native  country,  and  carry  on  the  righteous  work  for 
which  alone  home  and  freedom  are  worth  possessing. 
His  mission  was  "  to  comfort  all  that  mourn,  to  appoint 
'•  unto  them  that  mourn  in  Zion,  to  give  them  beauty 

1  The  word  for  "valley"  in  Isa.         2  Luke  iv.  16-21. 
xi.  4,  is  "lavine." 


90  THE  RETURN.  Lect.  XLII1 

"  for  ashes,  the  oil  of  joy  for  mourning,  the  garment  of 
"  praise  for  the  spirit  of  heaviness,  that  they  might  be 
"called  the  terebinths  of  righteousness,  the  planting 
"  of  the  Eternal,  that  He  might  be  glorified." 

Such  is  the  ideal  of  the  Return :  nor  is  it  unworthy 
connected  of  the  mighty  issues  which  ultimately  hung 
natural  on  that  event.  Although  the  actual  event 
evenls*!  seems  small  and  homely,  yet  that  very  home- 
liness indicates  one  of  the  main  characteristics  of  the 
epoch  on  which  we  have  entered.  Unlike  the  first  Ex- 
odus, this  second  Exodus  was  effected  not  by  any  sudden 
effort  of  the  nation  itself,  nor  by  any  interposition  of 
signs  and  wonders,  but  by  the  complex  order  of  Provi- 
dence, in  which  the  Prophet  thus  bids  his  peo- 
ple see  an  intervention  no  less  Divine  than  that 
which  had  released  them  from  Egypt.  "  Wheel  within 1 
"  wheel "  was  the  intricate  machinery  which  Ezekiel 
had  seen  in  his  visions  on  the  Chebar ;  but  not  the  less 
was  a  spirit  as  of  a  living  creature  within  the  wheels. 
Decree  of  The  document  that  inaugurates  the  new2  era  is 
Cyrus.  not  t]ie  t]ie  wor(j  0f  jewish  lawgiver  or  prophet 
or  priest,  but  the  decree  of  a  heathen  king.  "  Now  in 
"  the  first  year  of  Cyrus  king  of  Persia,  that  the  word 
"  of  Jehovah  by  Jeremiah  might  be  fulfilled,  Jehovah 
"  stirred  up  the  spirit  of  Cyrus  king  of  Persia,  that  he 
"  made  a  proclamation  throughout  all  his  kingdom  and 
"  put  it  in  writing." 

It  is  difficult  not  to  suppose  that  the  language  of 
the  decree  is  colored  by  the  Hebrew  medium  through 
which  it  passes,  but  in  tone  and  spirit  it  resembles  those 
which  have  been  found  inscribed  on  the  Persian  monu- 

1  Ezek.  i.  20.  no  loss  than  three  times,  in  Ezra  i. 

2  The  emphatic  solemnity  of  the  1-4;  2  Chron.  xxxvi.  22,  23;  1  Es- 
Jecree  is  confirmed  by  its  repetition     (Iras  ii.  3-7. 


Lect.  xliii.         ITS  CONNECTION  WITH  CYRUS.  91 

ments  ;  and  if  Ormuzd  be  substituted  for  Jehovah,  and 
"the  Creator1  of  the  earth,  the  heavens,  and  man- 
"kind,"  for  the  single  form  of  "the  Creator  of  earth," 
there  is  nothing  impossible  in  the  thought  that  we  have 
the  very  words  of  the  decree  itself.  But  at  any  rate 
it  stands  as  the  guiding  cause  of  the  liberation,  and 
stamps  itself  as  the  turning-point  of  the  whole  sub- 
sequent history.  Before  this  time  the  people  of  Israel 
had  been  an  independent  nation ;  from  this  moment  it 
is  merged  in  the  fortunes  of  the  great  Gentile  Empires. 
There  are  three  successive  periods  through  which  it  has 
to  pass,  and  each  will  derive  its  outward  form  and  press- 
ure from  an  external  power.  Of  these  the  first  is  the 
Persian.  Cyrus,  Darius,  Xerxes,  and  Artaxerxes  were 
henceforth  for  two  hundred  years  to  exercise  the  in- 
fluence which  in  earlier  times  had  been  exercised  by 
the  Princes  and  Kings  of  Israel.  The  year  hencefor- 
ward is  dated  from  the  accession  of  the  Persian  Kings 
as  afterwards  of  the  Rulers  of  Antioch  and  of  Rome. 

We  shall  hereafter  trace  some  direct  effects  of  this 
connection  on  the  religious  condition  of  the  people.  It 
is  enough  for  the  present  to  remark  that  the  community 
which  returned  under  these  circumstances  was  no  longer 
a  nation  in  the  full  sense  of  that  word,  and  thenceforth 
had  to  eke  out  that  inestimable  element  by  its  connec- 
tion with  the  powerful  monarchies  with  which  it  was 
brought  into  contact.  But  this  very  change  was  trans- 
figured in  the  language  of  the  great  contemporary 
Prophet  into  the  vision  which  has  never  since  died  out 
of  the  hopes  of  mankind,  that  the  wide  course  of  human 
history,  the  mighty  powers  of  the  earth,  instead  of 
standing,  as  hitherto,  apart  from  the  course  of  religion 

1  Ewald,  v.  48.     The  Persian  form  is  slightly  varied  in  Isa.  xlii.  5;  xliv, 


92  THE  RETURN.  Lect.  XLIII. 

and  progress,  would  combine  with  that  hitherto  isolated 
movement.  "  Arise,1  shine,  for  thy  light  is  come,  and 
"  the  glory  of  the  Eternal  is  risen  upon  thee.  The 
"nations  shall  come  to  thy  light,  and  kings  to  the 
"  brightness  of  thy  rising.  Thou  shalt  suck  the  milk  of 
"the  nations,  and  shalt  suck  the  breast  of  kings." 
"  Kings 2  shall  be  thy  nursing  fathers  and  queens  thy 
"nursing  mothers."  "  The  nations  shall  see  thy  right- 
"  eousness  and  all  kings  thy3  glory." 

Doubtless  the  real  fell  far  short  of  the  ideal,  as  in  the 
actual  Return,  so  in  the  actual  Cyrus.4  But  the  fact 
which  enkindled  those  hopes,  and  those  hopes  them- 
selves, have  lent  a  framework  to  the  noblest  aspirations 
of  humanity  :  they  are  the  same  as  Plato  expressed  in 
the  well-known  saying,  that  the  world  would  not  be 
happy  till  either  philosophers  became  kings,  or  kings 
became  philosophers  —  the  same  as  the  last  seer  of  the 
Jewish  race  expressed  in  the  cry,  "  The 5  kingdoms  of 
"  this  world  are  become  the  kingdoms  of  the  Lord  and 
"of  his  Anointed." 

It  is  evident  'that  the  return  was  not  that  of  the 
b.c.  536.  whole  of  the  exiles.  Those  who  had  been  trans- 
The  partial  planted  from  the  north  of  Palestine  in  the  As- 
ofthe  syrian  captivity  never  returned  at  all,  or  only 
in  small  numbers.  Those  who  had  been  trans- 
ported to  Babylon  and  became  settlers,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  those  rich  plains  and  in  that  splendid  city,  were  many 
of  them  contented  to  remain  —  some  holding  hiffh 
places  in  the  Persian  court,  though  still  keeping  up 
communication  with  their  brethren  in  Palestine,  some 
permanently   becoming    the   members   of    that   great 

1  Isa.  lx.  1,  3,  16.  *  See  Ewald,  v.  29. 

2  Isa.  xlix.  23.  5  Revelation  xi.  15. 
8  lea.  lxii.  2. 


Lect.  xliii.  its  elements.  93 

Babylonian  colony  of  Jews  which  caused 1  Mesopotamia 
to  become  as  it  were  a  second  Holy  Land,  and  round 
which  were  planted  the  tombs,  real  or  supposed,  of  the 
three  great  Jewish  saints  of  this  epoch,  —  Ezekiel,  Dan- 
iel, and  one  who  is  yet  to  come,  Ezra.2 

Still,  there  were  some  both  of  the  highest  and  the 
lowest  of  the  settlement  who  listened  to  the  call  The 
alike  of  their  inspiring  Prophet  and  of  their  caravan- 
beneficent  ruler ;  and  we  can  discern  the  chief  elements 
which  constituted  the  seed  of  the  rising  community. 
The  whole  caravan  consisted  of  12,000 ;  besides  this 
were  7,337  slaves,  200  of  whom  were  minstrels,  male 
and  female.  We  recognize  at  once  some  conspicuous 
and  familiar  names.  Twelve 3  chiefs,  as  if  in  reminis- 
cence of  the  twelve  tribes,  were  marked  out  as  the  lead- 
ers. Amongst  these  was  the  acknowledged  head  of  the 
community,  the  grandson,  real  or  adopted,  of  the  be- 
loved and  lamented  Jehoiachin,  last  direct  heir  of  the 
House  of  David  and  Josiah  —  the  son  of  Shealtiel  or 
Salathiel,  who  bore  the  trace  of  his  Babylonian  birth- 
place in  his  two  Chaldoean  names,  Zerubbabel  "the 
"  Babel-born,"  or  Sheshbazzar,  or  Sarabazzar,4  and  who, 
by  his  official  titles,  was  marked  out  as  the  representa- 
tive amongst  them  of  the  Persian  king,  "  the 5  Tirsha- 
"  tha,"  or  "the  Pasha,"  that  old  Assyrian  word  which 
has  never  since  died  out  amongst  the  governments  of 
the  East.     Next  to  him  was  Jeshua  or  Joshua,  the  son 


1  See  Lectures  XXXIV.  XLI.  "remained    at   Babylon,    the   chaff 

2  For  the   inferior  elements  mixed  "  came  to  Palestine. " 

up  in  the  return,  see  the  tradition  of  8  Ezra  ii.  1;  Neh.  vii.  7;  Ewald, 

the  Targums  in  Deutsch  on  the  Tar-  v.  86. 

gums  (Remains,  321),  "foundlings,  4  Ezra  i.  8,  11;  v.  14,  16. 

"proselytes,    and    illegitimate  chil-  5  Ezra  ii.  63;  Nehem.  vii.  65,  70; 

'dren."     "  The  flour,"  it  was  said,  Haggai  i.   1,   14;  ii.  2,  21;  Ezra  vi. 

7.     (See  Gesenius  in  voce.) 


94  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLIII. 

of  Josedek,  the  High  Priest  who  had  been  carried  into 
exile  with  Zedekiah,  and  shared  his  imprisonment. 
Next  to  them  in  rank  and  elder  in  years  was  Seraiah 
the  priest,  son  of  Hilkiah.1  But  of  the  ancient  four- 
and-twenty  sacerdotal  courses,  four  only  joined  in  the 
procession ;  it  may  be  from  the  havoc  of  the  priestly 
caste  in  the  desperate  struggle  at  the  time  of  the  capture 
of  the  Temple ;  it  may  be  from  the  attachment  of  the 
others  to  their  Babylonian  homes.  Still  the  number  of 
priests  (4,000)  was  large  in  proportion  to  the  people, 
yet  larger  in  proportion  to  the  Levites,  who  numbered 
only  74  besides  the  128  singers  of  the  family  of  Asaph, 
and  the  139 2  descendants  of  those  stalwart  gatekeepers 
the  sacerdotal  soldiery  or  police,  that  had  guarded  the 
whole  circuit  of  the  Temple  walls,  and  were  believed  to 
have  rendered  the  state  such  important  service  on  the 
day  that  Jahoiada 3  planned  the  overthrow  of  Athaliah.4 
Along  with  them  were  the  392  representatives  of  the 
ancient  Canaanite  bondmen,  whose  ancestral  names  in- 
dicated their  foreign  origin,  the  Nethinim,5  or  "  conse- 
"  crated  giftsmen  "  bound  over  to  the  honored  work 
of  the  Temple  service  —  or  "  the  children  of  Solomon's 
"slaves"  —  that  is,  doubtless,  of  those  Phoenician  art- 
ists whom  the  great  king  had  employed  in  the  con- 
struction of  his  splendid  works. 

So  the  names  stood  in  a  register 6  which  a  century 

afterward  was  found  by  an  inquiring  antiquary 

in  the  Archives  of  Jerusalem,  and  its  accuracy 

was  tested  by  the   additional  record  that  there  was  a 

1  Compare  Nch.  xi.  11,  with  Ezra         4  See  Lecture  XXXV. 

ii.  i.  5  See    "  Nethinim  "    in    Diet,    of 

2  Ezra  ii.  41-42;  Neh.  vii.  43-44;     Bible. 

.  Chron.  ix.  17-21.  °  Neh.  vii.  6-73;  Ezra  ii.  1-70;  1 

8  According  to  2  Chron.  xxiii.  2,     Esdras  v.  1-46  ;  comp.  1  Chron.  ix. 
4,  5.  1-34. 


Lect.  xliii.  its  elements.  95 

rigid  scmtiiry  on  the  departure  from  Babylon  to  ex- 
clude from  this  favored  community  those  who  could 
not  prove  their  descent.  Such  was  a  body  of  unknown 
applicants  from  the  villages  in  the  jungles  or  salt 
marshes  near  the  Persian  Gulf.1  Such  was  another 
band,  claiming  to  be  of  priestly  origin,  and  justifying 
their  pretensions,  but  in  vain,  by  appealing  to  an  an- 
cestor who  had  married  a  daughter  and  taken  the  name 
of  the  renowned  old  Gileadite  chief  Barzillai.2 

In  the  front  or  centre  of  this  caravan,  borne  prob- 
ably by  the  Nethinim  —  in  place  of  the  ark  that  had 
formed  the  rallying  point  of  the  earlier  wanderings  — 
were  the  carefully  collected  vessels  of  the  Temple,  the 
Palladium  to  which  the  hopes  of  the  nation  had  been 
attached,  which  had  been  the  badges  of  contention  be- 
tween Jeremiah  and  his  opponents  before  the  Cap- 
tivity ;  which  had  been  carried  off  in  triumph  by  Ne- 
buchadnezzar and  lodged  in  the  most  magnificent  of  all 
receptacles,  the  Temple  of  Bel  •  which  had  adorned 
the  banquet  of  Belshazzar  ;  and  which  now,  by  special 
permission  of  Cyrus,3  were  taken  out  of  the  Baby- 
lonian treasury,  according,  as  one  tradition  said,  to  a 
special  vow  made  by  the  King  in  his  earlier  days.4 
There  they  were  borne  aloft,  each  article  of  plate  was 
carefully  Lamed  in  lists  three  times  recorded,  the 
thousand  cups  of  original  gold,  the  thousand  cups  of 
silver,  which  marked  the  double  stage  of  the  Cap- 
tivity, with  all  the  lesser  vessels,  even  the  nine  and 
twenty  knives,5  amounting  in  all,  as  was  carefully 
noted,  to  5,499. 

1  Ezra  ii.  59.  xxxvi.   10,   13  ;   Jer.   xxvii.    16-22  ; 

2  Ezra  ii.  59-61  s  jffeh.  vii.  61,  62;  xxviii.  2,  3;  Dan.  v.  See  Lectures 
and  the  confused  text  of  1  Esd^as  v.     XL.  XLI.  XLTI. 

36-38.  4  1  Esdras  v.  44. 

8  Ezra   i.    7;    vi     14;    2    Chron.         6  Ezra  i.  9. 


96  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLIII 

It  was  like  the  procession  of  the  Vestal  Virgins,  with 
the  sacred  fire  in  their  hands,  in  their  retreat  from 
Rome  ;  like  /Eneas  with  his  household  gods  from  Troy. 
Homely  as  they  were,  grates,  knives,  spoons,  basins, 
recalling  alike  the  glory  of  the  time  of  Solomon,  in 
their  original  gold,  the  decline  of  the  last  days  of 
Jerusalem  in  the  silver  substitutes  of  Zedekiah,  they 
were  the  links  which  seemed  to  weave  a  continuous 
chain  across  the  gulf  which  parted  the  old  and  the  new 
era  of  Israelite  history. 

Forth  from  the  gates  of  Babylon  they  rode  on 
The  camels,  mules,  asses,   and   (now  for   the  first 

journey.  ^me  ^n  ^ieir  history)  0n  horses,  to  the  sound 
of  joyous  music  —  a  band  of  horsemen1  playing  on 
flutes  and  tabrets,  accompanied  by  their  own  two  hun- 
dred minstrel  slaves,  and  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight 
singers  of  the  temple,2  responding  to  the  Prophet's 
voice,  as  they  quitted  the  shade  of  the  gigantic  walls 
and  found  themselves  in  the  open  desert  beyond. 
"Go3  ye  out  of  Babylon.  Flee  from  the  Chaldeans, 
"  with  a  voice  of  singing  declare  ye,  tell  this,  utter  it 
"  even  to  the  end  of  the  earth ;  say  ye,  The  Eternal 
"  hath  redeemed  his  servant  Jacob." 

The  prospect  of  crossing  that  vast  desert,  which  in- 
tervened between  Chaldsea  and  Palestine,  was  one 
which  had  filled  the  minds  of  the  exiles  with  all  man- 
ner of  terrors.  It  seemed  like  a  second  wandering  in 
the  desert  of  Sinai.  It  was  a  journey  of  nearly  four 4 
months  at  the  slow  rate  at  which  such  caravans  then 
travelled.  Unlike  the  wilderness  of  Sinai,  it  was  di- 
versified by  no  towering  mountains,  no  delicious  palm 

1  1    Esdras   v.    1-8    transfers    to         8  Isa.  xlviii.  20,  21. 

Darius  what  belongs  to  Cyrus.  *  Ezra  vii.  8,  9.    The  journey  now 

2  Ezra  ii.  41-G5.  takes  ordinarily  about  two  months. 


Lect.  xliii.  the  journey.  97 

groves,  no  gushing  springs.  A  hard,  gravel  plain  from 
the  moment  they  left  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates  till 
they  reached  the  northern  extremity  of  Syria  ;  with  no 
solace  except  the  occasional  wells1  and  walled 

.  „  .  b.  c.  536. 

stations;  or,  if  their  passage  was  in  the  spring, 
the   natural    herbage   and   flowers  which    clothed    the 
arid  soil.     Ferocious  hordes  of  Bedouin2  robbers  then, 
as  now,  swept  the  whole  tract. 

This  dreary  prospect  preoccupied  with  overwhelm- 
ing prominence  the  Evangelical  Prophet.  But  he 
would  not  hear  of  fear.  It  was  in  his  visions  not  a 
perilous  enterprise  but  a  march  of  triumph  :  "  There- 
fore the  redeemed  of  the  Eternal  shall  return,  and 
"  come  with  singing  unto  Zion,  and  everlasting  joy 
"  shall  be  upon  their  heads ;  they  shall  obtain  gladness 
"  and  joy,  and  sorrow  and  mourning  shall  flee  away." 
As  before  some  Royal  potentate,  there  would  go  be- 
fore them  an  invisible  Protector,  who  should  remove 
the  hard  stones  from  the  bare  feet  of  those  that  ran 
beside  the  camels,  and  cast  them  up  in  piles  on  either 
side  to  mark  the  broad  track  seen  for  long  miles  across 
the  desert.  It  should  be  as  if  Moses  were  again  at 
their  head,  and  the  wonders  of  the  Red 3  Sea  and  Sinai 
re-enacted.  The  heat  of  the  scorching  sun  shall  be 
softened  ;  they  shall  be  led  to  every  spring  and  pool  of 
water : 4  if  water  is  not  there,  their  invisible  Guide 
shall,  as  of  old,  bring  it  out  of  the  cloven  rock.  Even 
the  wild  animals  of  the  desert,5  the  ostrich  and  the 
jackal,  shall  be  startled  at  its  unexpected  6  rush.  Even 
the  isles  of  palms  which  cheered  the  ancient  Israelites 

1  Layard,   Nineveh  and  Babylon,         4  Isa.  xli.   (i  ;  xlviii.  20,  21;  xliv 
535.  19;  xlix.  11. 

"•  Ezra  viii.  31.  5  Isa.  xliii.  20. 

3  Isa.  li.  10;  lxiii   11.  6  Isa.  xli.  18,  19. 

13 


98  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLI1L 

in  Arabia  shall  not  be  sufficient.  Cedar  as  well  as 
acacia,  olive  and  myrtle,  pine  and  cypress,  all  that  is 
most  unlike  to  the  vegetation  of  the  desert  shall  spring 
up  along  these  fountains.  It  is-  a  curious  instance  of 
the  prosaic  temper  which  has  led  many  modern  com- 
mentators to  expect  a  literal  fulfilment  of  the  poetic 
expressions  of  the  Hebrew  Prophets,  that  the  Jewish 
rabbis  of  later  times  supposed  all  these  wonders  to 
have  actually  occurred,  and  were  surprised  to  find  no 
mention  of  them  in  the  narrative  of  the  contemporary l 
chronicler. 

But  the  spirit  of  these  high-wrought  strains  is  the 
same  as  that  expressed  in  the  simpler  language  yet 
similar  faith  of  the  songs  of  the  "  ascents,"  some  of 
which  we  can  hardly  doubt  to  have  been  chanted  by 
the  minstrels  of  the  caravan  during  their  long  ascend- 
ing journey  up  the  weary  slope  which  reached  from 
the  level  plains  of  Babylon  to  their  own  rocky  fortress 
of  Judaea.  They  lifted  up  their  eyes  to  the  distant 
mountains  of  Syria,  and  when  they  thought  of  the  long 
interval  yet  to  traverse  they  asked  whence  was  to  come 
their  help  ?  Their  answer  was,  that  they  looked  to  the 
eternal,  unsleeping  watchfulness  of  the  Guardian  of 
Israel,  who  by  night  and  day  should  guard  them,  stand 
as  their  shade  on  their  southern  side  against  the  noon- 
day sun,  and  at  last  guard  their  entrance  into  Palestine, 
as  He  had  guarded  their  Exodus  from  Babylon.2 

The  high,  snowclad  ridge  of  Herinon  would  be  the 

1  Kimchi,  quoted  by  Gescnius  on  "that  is  known  to  have  passed 
Isa.  xlviii.  20,  21.  "through   it  in   ancient  times  yn>.* 

2  Psalm  exx.-exxxiv.,  especially  "  Nebuchadnezzar,  who,  on  hearing 
Psalm  exxi.  1-8.  The  route  which  I  "of  his  father's  death  struck  straight 
have  described  appears  both  from  "  across  the  desert  from  Palestine  to 
the  ancient  and  modern  practice  to  "Babylon."  Berosus,  in  Josephus, 
have  been  the  one  that  must  have  Ant.,  x.  11,  1  (Upham,  p.  31). 
been   taken.     "  The   only   traveller 


Lect.  xliii.  the  journey.  99 

first  object  that  at  a  distance  of  four  or  five  days 
journey  would  rise  on  the  uniform  horizon  of  the  exiles. 
We  knew  not  whether  they  would  enter  Syria  at  the 
nearer  point  of  Damascus  or  at  the  farther  point  (but 
as  it  would  appear,  the  usual  route  at  that  time)  of 
Ha  math  or  Riblah.1 

Even  then  there  would  still  be  a  long  journey  of  hill 
and  vale  to  traverse  before  they  reached  their  home. 
But,  already  (so  we  gather  from  the  shouts  of  joy  with 
which  the  Prophet  anticipated  this  happy  moment),  the 
dead  city  would  be  roused  up  from  her  slumber  of  sev- 
enty years.  The  sleeping  potion  of  the  Divine 
wrath  has  been  drunk  to  the  dregs  —  she  is  to 
shake  off  the  dust 2  of  the  ruins  amongst  which  he  has 
lain  —  she  is  to  break  the  chain  which  fastened  her 
neck  down  to  the  ground.  She  is  to  listen  for  the  joy- 
ful signal  of  the  messengers3  stationed  on  the  eastern 
hills,  who  will  descry  the  exiles  from  afar  and  hand  on 
the  good  tidings  from  hill  to  hill,  like  beacon  flames, 
till  at  last  it  reaches  the  height  of  Olivet,  or  of  Ramah  ; 
where  Zion  herself  stands  on  tiptoe  to  catch  the  news, 
and,  like  the  maidens  of  old  who  welcomed  the  return- 
ing heroes,  proclaim  to  the  cities  of  Judah,  each  on  their 
crested  hills  around  her,  that  the  Divine  Presence  is  at 
hand :  that  the  little  flock  has  been  guided  through  the 
wilderness  safely ;  even  the  weary  laggards  are  cared 
for ;  even  the  lambs  are  folded  in  the  shepherd's  bo- 
som ;  even  the  failing  ewes  are  gently  helped  onwards.4 

It  is  not  difficult  to  figure  to  ourselves  the  general 
aspect  of  Palestine  on  the  Return.     Monarchy,  Appear- 
priesthood,  art,  and  commerce  had  departed,  Palestine. 

1  2  Kings  xxv.  6,  20,  21;  xxiii.  33.     graphic  beacon  fires  see  Jer.  vi.  1 

2  Isa.  lii.  1,  2,  7,  8.  RaphalPs  History  of  the  Jews,  ii.  70. 

3  For  the   custom   of   these   tele-        4  Isa.  xl.  9-11. 


100  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLIII. 

but  a  large  population  had  been  left,  partly  of  the 
aboriginal  tribes,  partly  of  the  humbler  classes  of  Is- 
rael, to  till  the  ground.  There  was  the  Persian  govern- 
or, perhaps  more  than  one,  who  controlled  the  whole.1 
The  central  portion  was  occupied,  as  we  have  seen, 
by  mixed  settlers  from  the  East,  who  combined  with 
the  original2  habitants  to  compose  the  people,  alter- 
nately called,  from  their  twofold  origin,  Cutheans  or 
Samaritans.  The  Scythians  still  remained  in  posses- 
sion of  the  Canaanite  stronghold  of  Bethshan  —  the 
centre,  at  that  time,  of  the  borderland  between  Israel 
and  the  heathen  nations,  already  forming  itself  under 
the  Monarchy,  but  now  becoming  more  and  more 
defined,  and  gradually  taking  itself  the  name,  which 
which  was  at  last  in  fame  to  eclipse  that  of  any  other 
division  of  Palestine  —  Galilee  of  the  Gentiles,  or 
Galilee  ;    "  the  Heathen-march,"  or  the  March.3 

In  the  Transjordanic  territory,  although  the  country 
of  Moab  and  Amnion  had  been  frightfully  devasted  4 
by  the  Chaldaean  invasion,  the  inhabitants  had  been 
allowed  to  remain  in  their  homes,  and  their  chiefs6 
occupied  independent  and  powerful  positions. 

The  western  coast  was  occupied  by  the  old  enemies 
of  Israel,  the  Philistines,  now  re-asserting  their  in- 
dependence, and  their  chief  city,  Ashdod,  still  speak- 
ing their  own  language G  —  still  worshipping  their  an- 
cient sea-god  Dagon. 

The  south  was  overrun  by  the  vindictive  and  un- 
generous race  of  Edom,  which  even  claimed7  the  whole 
country  as  its  own,  with  the  capital  of  Akrabbim. 

1  Ezra  iv.  11;  v.  3.  6  Neh.    ii.    10;    iv.    7.     Josephus, 

2  See  Lecture  XXXIV.  Ant.,  xiii.  8.  1. 

8  Ewald,  v.  98.  6  Neh.  iv.  7;  xiii.  21;  1  Mace,  x  84. 

4  Jer.  xxvii.  3,  G;  xxviii.  14;  7  Ewald,  v.  81.  1  Mace.  iv.  29; 
riviii.  11.  v.  8. 


Lect.  xliii.  the  settlement.  101 

There  only  remained,  therefore,  for  the  new  comers 
the  small,  central  strip  of  the  country  round  Jerusalem 
occupied  by  the  tribes  of  Judah  and  Benjamin.  From 
these  two  tribes  the  larger  part  of  the  exiles  were 
descendants,  and  to  this,  their  ancient  home,  they  re- 
turned. Henceforth  the  name  of  Judah  took  the 
predominant  place  in  the  national  titles.  As  the 
primitive  name  of  "  Hebrew  "  had  given  way  to  the 
historical  name  of  Israel,  so  that  of  Israel  now  gave 
way  to  the  name  of  Judcean,  or  Jew,  so  full  of  The 
praise  and  pride,  of  reproach  and  scorn.  "  It™j£wui" 
"was  born,"  as  their  later  historian1  truly  ob-  and"Jew-" 
serves,  "  on  the  day  when  they  came  out  from  Baby- 
"  Ion,"  and  their  history  thenceforth  is  the  history  not 
of  Israel  but  of  Judaism. 

We  trace  the  settlers  of  those  rocky  fastnesses  back, 
each  like  a  bird  to  its  nest.  Each  hill-fort,  so  well- 
known  in  the  wars  of  Saul  and  David,  in  the  ap- 
proaches of  Sennacherib,2  once  more  leaps  into 
view ;  Gibeon,  and  Ramah,  and  Geba,  and  the 
pass  of  Michmash,  and  the  slope  of  Anothoth,  and 
the  long  descent  of  Bethel  and  Ai,  and  the  waving 
palms  of  Jericho,  and  the  crested  height  of  Bethlehem, 
and  the  ancient  stronghold  of  Kirjathjearim,3  all  re- 
ceived back  their  "men,"  their  "  children,"  after  their 
long  separation.  Some  gradually  crept  farther  south 
through  the  now  Idumasan  territory  to  the  villages 
round  Hebron,  to  which  the  old  Canaanite  possessors 
once  more  gave  its  ancient  name  of  "Kirjath-arba."4 
Some  stole  along  the  plains  of  the  south  coast  down 
to    the    half-Bedouin    settlements    of   Beersheba    and 

*  Joseplms,  Ant.,  xi.  5,  7.  4  Nek.  xi.  25.    (See  Mr.  Grove  on 

3  Neb.  vii.  25-30.  Kirjath-arba  in  Diet,  of  Bible.) 

Ezra  ii.  23,  25,  28,  34. 


102  THE   RETURN.  Lkct.  XLIIL 

Molada  on  the  frontier  of  the  desert.  The  bands  of 
singers  established  themselves  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Jerusalem,  at  Geba,  or  at  Gilgal,  in  the  Jordan 
valley. 

But  these  all,  as  it  were,  clustered  round  Jerusalem, 
which  now  for  the  first  time  in  history  assumes 
the  name  never  since  lost,  and  which  in  the 
East  still  remains  its  only  title,  "The  Holy1  City," 
and  if  the  country  at  large  also  takes  for  the  first  time 
in  the  mouths  of  the  returning  exiles  the  name  which 
has  clung  to  it  with  hardly  less  tenacity,  "  The  Holy 2 
"Land,"  it  is  as  the  seat  and  throne  of  the  consecrated 
capital,  which,  if  fallen  from  its  antique  splendor, 
reigned  supreme,  as  never  before,  over  the  affections 
and  the  reverence  of  the  people.  When  Herodotus 
in  the  next  century  passed  by  it  he  knew  it  only  by 
this  name,  "The  Holy  Place,"  Kadesh,  Grecised 3  into 
Kadytis.  When,  three  centuries  later,  Strabo  saw  it 
again,  though  the  name  of  Jerusalem  had  been  as- 
certained,  it  was  transformed  into  Hierosolymaf  the 
Holy  Place  of  Salem,  or  Solomon,5  and  he  felt  that  it 
properly  expressed  the  awe  and  veneration 6  with 
which  he  regarded  it,  as  though  it  had  been  one  of  his 
own  ancestral  seats  of  oracular  sanctity. 

All  the  other  shrines  and  capitals  of  Israel,  with  the 
single  exception  of  that  on  Mount  Gerizim,  had  been 
swept  away.  The  sanctity  of  Bethel  and  Shiloh,  the 
regal  dignity  of  Samaria  and  Jezreel,  had  how  disap- 
peared for  ever.  Jerusalem  remained  the  undisputed 
queen  of  the  whole  country  in  an  unprecedented  sense. 

:  Isa.  xlviii.  2;  Hi.  1;  lvi.  7;  lxiv.         4  Philo  calls  it  Hieropolis. 

10.  El  Khods  in  Arabic.  6  Eupolemus,  in  Eus.  Prcep.  Ev. 

2  Zech.  ii.  12  (Ewald,  v.  60).  ix.  34. 

3  Herod,  iii.  5.  6  Strabo,  xvi.  10,  37. 


Lect.  xliii.  the  settlement.  103 

Even  those  very  tribes  which  before  had  been  her  ri- 
vals, acknowledged  in  her  misfortunes  the  supremacy 
which  they  had  denied  to  her  in  her  prosperity.  Pil- 
grims from  Shechem,  Shiloh  and  Samaria,  immediately 
after  the  Babylonian  Captivity  began,  came,  with  every 
outward  sign  of1  mourning,  to  wail  and  weep  (like  the 
Jews  of  our  own  day)  over  the  still  smoking  ruins. 

It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  the  exiles  had  con- 
stantly nourished  the  hope  of  the  rebuilding  of  Jerusa- 
lem, which  they  had  never  forgotten  in  their  brightest 
or  their  darkest  days  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates ; 2 
that  the  highest  reward  to  which  any  of  them  could 
look  forward  would  be  that  they  should  build  the  old 
waste 3  places,  raise  up  the  foundations  of  many  gener- 
ations, be  called  the  repairer  of  the  ruins,  the  restorer 
of  paths  to  dwell  in.  It  was  natural  that  along  the 
broken  walls  of  the  city  of  David  there  should  have 
been,  as  the  Return  drew  nearer,  devout  Israelites  seen 
standing  like  sentinels,  repeating  their  constant  watch- 
words, which  consisted  of  an  incessant  cry  day  and 
night,  giving  the  Divine  Protector  no  rest  until  He  es- 
tablish and  make  Jerusalem  a  praise  upon  the  earth.4 
It  was  natural  that  the  names  which  had  begun  to  at- 
tach to  her  during  her  desertion,  as  though  she  were 
the  impersonation  of  Solitude  and  Desolation,  should 
give  place  to  the  joyful  names6  of  the  Bride 
and  the  Favorite  returning  to  her  married 
home  with  all  the  gayety  and  hopefulness  of  an  Eastern 
wedding.  It  was  natural  that  Ezekiel  by  the  banks  ol 
the  Chebar  should  so  concentrate  his  thoughts  on  the 

1  Jer.  xli.  5-8  (Ewald,  v.  97);  see         8  Isa.  Iviii.  12;  Ixi.  4. 
Lecture  XL.  4  Isa.  lxii.  6,  7. 

2  Psalm  cxxxvii.  1,5,  see  Lecture        5  Isa.  lxii.  4,  5;  liv.  1-7.    Beulal 
XLI.  and  Hephzibah. 


[04  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLIII 

City  and  Temple  of  Jerusalem  that  their  dimensions 
grew  in  his  visions  to  such  a  colossal  size  as  to  absorb 
the  whole  of  Palestine  by  their  physical  structure,  no 
less  than  they  did  actually  by  their  moral  significance. 
Accordingly,  the  one  object  which  filled  the  thoughts 
The  conse-  01*  ^ie  returning  exiles,  the  one  object,  as  it  was 
srationof     believed  by  them,  for  which  the  Return  had 

the  new  «/  7 

altar-  been  permitted  by  the  Persian  king,  was  "  the 

"  building  of  an  house  of  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  at  Je- 
"  rusalem  which  is  in  Judah." 

There  was  a  moment,  it  might  have  been  supposed, 
when  the  idea  of  a  more  spiritual  worship,  like  that  of 
the  Persians,  would  dispense  altogether  with  outward 
buildings.  "  The  heaven  is  my  throne,  the  earth  is  my 
"  footstool :  where  is  the  house  that  ye  build  unto  me  ? 
"  and  where  is  the  place  of  my  rest  V'1  But  this  doc- 
trine of  the  Evangelical  Prophet  was  not  yet  capable  of 
being  put  into  practice ;  perhaps  in  its  literal  sense 
never  will  be.  Ezekiel's  ideal  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
rather  the  restoration  of  the  Temple  on  a  gigantic  scale. 
It  was  the  chief,  the  one  mission  of  Zerubbabel,  and  in 
a  few  weeks  or  months  after  his  arrival  the  first  step 
was  taken  toward  the  erection  of  the  second  Temple 
of  Jerusalem,  the  Temple  which  was  destined  to  meet 
the  requirements  of  the  national  worship,  till  it  gave 
way  to  the  third  Temple  of  the  half-heathen  Herod. 
That  first  step  was  precisely  on  the  traces  of  the  older 
Temple.  As  the  altar  which  David  erected  long  pre- 
ceded the  completion  of  the  splendid  structure  of  Sol- 
omon, so  before  any  attempt  was  made  to  erect  the 
walls,  or  even  to  lay  the  foundations  of  the  Temple  of 
the  coming  era,  there  was  erected  on  the  platform- for- 
merly occupied2  by  the  threshing-floor  of  Araunah,  then 

i  Isa.  lxvi.  1.  2  Ezra  iii.  3. 


Lect.  xliil  the  altar.  105 

for  five  centuries  by  the  stately  altar  of  David  and  his 
son  Solomon,  the  central  hearth  of  the  future  Temple ; 
but,  as  if  to  vindicate  for  itself  an  intrinsic  majesty  de- 
spite of  its  mean  surroundings,  it  was  in  its  dimensions 
double  the  size  even  of  its  vast  predecessor.  The  day 
fixed  for  the  occasion  of  its  consecration  was  well  suited 
to  do  it  honor.  It  was  the  opening  to  the  great  au- 
tumnal Feast  of  the  Jewish  year  —  the  Feast  of  n  c.  536> 
Tabernacles  —  the  same  festival  as  that  chosen  0ctober- 
h}  Solomon  for  the  dedication  of  his  Temple,  and  by 
Jeroboam  for  the  dedication  of  the  rival  sanctuary  at 
Bethel.1  It  was  the  first  clay  of  the  seventh  month, 
which,  according  to  the  Babylonian,  now  adopted  as 
the  Jewish,  calendar,  henceforth  took  the  Chaldaean 
name  of  Tisri,  "  the  opening"  month,  the  "January," 
and  thus  became  the  first2  of  the  year. 

The  settlers  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  as  well  as 
the  aboriginal  inhabitants,  gathered  for  the  occasion 
and  witnessed  the  solemnity  from  the  open  space  in 
front  of  the  eastern  gate  of  the  Temple.3 

That  day  accordingly  was  fitly  the  birthday  of  the 
new  city.  Henceforth  there  were  once  more  seen  as- 
cending to  the  sky  the  columns  of  smoke,  morning  and 
evening,  from  the  daily  sacrifices  —  the  sign  at  once  of 
human  habitation  and  of  religious  worship  in  the  long- 
deserted  capital.  Now  that  the  central  point  was  se- 
cured, the  impulse  to  the  work  went  on.  The  contri- 
butions which  the  exiles  themselves  had  made  —  the 
offerings,  as  it  would  appear,  from  some  of  the  sur- 
rounding tribes,  under  the  influence  of  the  Per-   b  c  53g 


si  an 


Government,  added  to  the  resources.     The 


1  See  Lecture  XXVII.  8  1  Esdras  v.  47. 

2  September  (see  Kalisch's  Com- 
vnentary,  ii.  269). 

14 


106  THE   RETURN.  Lect    XLIIL 

artisan  population l  which  had  been  left  in  Palestine 
were  eagerly  pressed  forward  to  the  work  ;  the  cedars 
of  Lebanon  were  again,  under  Royal  command,  hewn 
down  and  brought,  on  receiving  payment  in  kind,  by 
Phoenician  vessels  to  Joppa.  The  High  Priest,  with  the 
various  members  of  the  sacerdotal  caste,  superintended 
the  work.  At  last,  in  the  seventh  month  of  the  second 
year  from  their  return  —  that  is,  within  a  year  from  the 
Founda-  erection  of  the  altar  —  the  foundation  of  the 
Second the    new  Temple  was  laid.     So  important  seemed 

Temple.         ^Q  ^Q  ^Q    ^^    ^us    ga|nec]    fl^    ^lie    fay  wag 

celebrated  with  the  first  display  of  the  old  pomp  on 
which  they  had  yet  ventured.  The  priests,  in  the  rich 
dresses  that  Zerubbabel  out  of  his  princely  munificence 
had  furnished,  blew  once  more  their  silver  trumpets ; 
the  sons  of  Asaph  once  more  clashed  their  brazen  cym- 
bals. Many  of  the  Psalms  which  fill  the  Psalter  with 
joyous  strains  were  doubtless  sung  or  composed  on  this 
occasion.2  One  strain  especially  rang  above  all  —  that 
which  runs  through  the  106th,  107th,  118th,  and  the 
136th  Psalm :  "  0  give  thanks  unto  the  Eternal ;  for 
"  He  is  good,  and  His  mercy  endureth  for  ever." 
Through  all  the  national  vicissitudes  of  weal  and  woe 
it  was  felt  that  the  Divine  goodness  had  remained  firm. 
If,  in  spite  of  some  appearances  to  the  contrary,3  the 
118th  Psalm  was  originally  appropriated  to  this  occa- 
sion, it  is  easy  to  see  with  what  force  the  two  choral 
companies  must  have  replied,  in  strophe  and  antis- 
trophe :  "  Open  to  me  the  gates  of  righteousness." 
u  This  is  the  gate  through  which  the  righteous  shall  en- 
'<  ter ; "  or  must  have  welcomed  the  foundation-stone 

1  Ezra  iii.  3-8.  more   naturally  to  a  battle  ;    verse9 

*  Ezra  iii.  10-13.  18,   19    might   imply  that  the  walls 

3  Psalm  cxviii.  8-12  wculd    refer     were  finished. 


Lect.  xliii.    the  foundation  of  the  temple.  107 

which,  after  all  difficulty  and  opposition,  had  at  last 
been  raised  on  the  angle  of  the  rocky  platform ;  or 
have  uttered  the  formula  which  afterwards1  became 
proverbial  for  all  such  popular  celebrations  :  "  Hosan- 
"  na  !  Save  us" — "Blessed  be  whosoever  cometh  in 
"the  name  of  the  Eternal," — or  the  culminating  cry 
with  which  the  sturdy  sacrificers  were  called  to  drag 
the  struggling  victim  and  bind  him  fast  to  the  horns  of 
the  newly-consecrated  altar.2 

Loud  and  long  were  these  Jewish  Te  Deums  re- 
echoed by  the  shouts  of  the  multitude.  It  was  not,  in- 
deed, a  clay  of  unmingled  joy,  for  amongst  the  crowd 
there  stood  some  aged  men,  who  had  lived  through  the 
great  catastrophe  of  the  Captivity  ;  who,  in  their  youth, 
had  seen  the  magnificent  structure  of  Solomon  standing 
in  its  unbroken  stateliness ;  and  when  they  compared 
with  that  vanished  splendor  these  scanty  beginnings, 
they  could  not  refrain  from  bursting  forth  into  a  loud 
wail  of  sorrow  at  the  sad  contrast.  The  two  strains  of 
feeling  from  the  older  and  younger  generation  mingled 
together  in  a  rivalry  of  emotion,  but  the  evil  omen  of 
the  lamentation  was  drowned  in  the  cry  of  exultation  ; 
.md  those  who  stood  on  the  outskirts  of  the  solemnity 
•  caught  only  the  impression  of  the  mighty  shout  that 
rang  afar  off — far  off,  as  it  seemed,  even  to  the  valleys 
of  Samaria.3 

That  mixed  expression,  however  overborne  for  the 
moment,  well  coincided  with  .the  actual  condition  of  the 
Jewish  community.  It  is  one  of  the  instructive  and 
pathetic  characteristics  of  this  period  that  we  have 
come  down  from  the  great  days  of  the  primitive  triumph 
of  grand  ideas,  or  the  exploits  of  single  heroes,  to  the 

1  Matt.  xxi.  9    (ReusH  on    Psalm         2  Psalm  cxviii.  27. 
.xviii.  26).  8  Ezra  iii.  12,  13  (Ewald,  t.  102). 


108  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLIII. 

complex,  pedestrian,   motley  struggles  (if  one  may  so 
speak)  of  modern  life. 

The  country x  was  unsettled  —  robber  hordes  roved 
through  it  —  the  harvest  and  the  vintage  were  uncer- 
tain. And,  yet  further,  now  began  the  first  renewal  of 
that  jealousy  between  the  north  and  south  of  Palestine, 
which  for  a  time  had  been  subdued  in  the  common 
sense  of  misfortune ;  and  the  feud  between  Jew  and 
Samaritan,  which,  under  various  forms,  continued  till 
the  close  of  this  period  —  a  jealousy  which,  if  it  repre- 
sents the  more  tenacious  grasp  of  a  purer  faith,  indi- 
cates also  the  more  exclusive  and  sectarian  spirit  now 
shrinking  closer  and  closer  into  itself. 

It  is  the  story  again  and  again  repeated  in  modern 
The  oPPo-  times  :  first,  the  natural  desire  of  an  estranged 
thl°sa?f  poulation  —  heretical  and  schismatical  as  they 
maritans.  mjgilt  )je  —  to  partake  in  a  glorious  national 
work  ;  then  the  rude  refusal  to  admit  their  cc-cpera- 
tion ;  then  the  fierce  recrimination  of  the  excluded 
party  and  the  determination  to  frustrate  the  good  work 
in  which  they  cannot  share.  The  Protestants  of  the 
sixteenth,  the  Puritans  of  the  seventeenth  century  may 
see  their  demands  in  the  innocent,  laudable  request  of 
the  northern  settlers  :  "  Let  us  build  with  you,  for  we 
"  seek  your  God  as  ye  do."  The  stiff  retort  of  the 
Church,  whether  in  Italy  or  England,  may  fortify  itself 
by  the  response  of  the  "  chief  of  the  fathers  of  Israel :  " 
"  Ye  have  nothing  to  do  with  us  to  build  an  house  unto 
"  our  God  ;  but  we  ourselves  together  will  build  unto 
"  the  God  of  Israel."  Each  alike  appeals  for  historic 
precedent  and  sanction  to  the  Imperial  Government 
which  gave  them  their  position  —  the  one  to  "  Esar- 
'haddon,  king  of  Assyria,"  the  other  to   "  Cyrus,  king 

i  Zecli.  viii.  10. 


Lect.  XLIII.  HAGGAI  AND   ZECHARIAH.  109 

<e  of  Persia,"  Constantine  or  Charlemagne,  Elizabeth  or 
Cromwell.  Each  alike  continues  its  appeal  before  that 
power,  forecasting,  even  to  the  letter,  the  litigations  by 
which  Greek,  Latin,  and  Armenian  invoke  the  aid  of  the 
Sublime  Porte  in  their  disputes  over  the  Holy  Places  on 
the  very  same  soil.  Each  alike,  and  all  their  successors, 
deserve  the  rebuke  which  had  been  anticipated  by  the 
Great  Prophet  of  the  Captivity,  when  in  his  ideal  glori- 
fication of  Jerusalem  he  described  that  its  walls  should 
be  built,  not  by  its  own  children,  but  by  the  sons  of 
strangers,  and  that  its  gates  should  not  be  rigidly  closed, 
but  should  be  open  continually,  and  be  shut  neither  day 
nor  night.1 

In  these   miserable  accusations  and  counter-accusa- 
tions carried  on  before   the  Princes  who  successively 
mounted  the  throne  of  Persia  —  the  fierce  Cam-  Cambyses 
byses,  the  usurping  Smerdis  —  twelve  precious  ji^iS9' 
years   were  wasted.2     At  last  the  revolution,  ScXB^' 
which  raised  the  son  of  Hystaspes  to  power, 485, 
gave  a  new  opening  to  the  oppressed  and  bewildered 
community  at  Jerusalem.     He,  the  second  Founder  of 
the  Persian  kingdom,  was,  as  it  were,  a  second  Cyrus 
to  them.     And  it  is  just  at  this  moment  that  the  scanty 
information  afforded  by  the  nameless  Chronicler3  is  sud- 
denly illuminated  by  the  appearance  of  the  two  Proph- 
ets who  had  taken,  though  in  shreds  and  tatters,  the 
mantle  of  prophecy  which  had  fallen  upon  them  from 
Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  the  Great  Unknown. 

They  stand  side  by  side.  One  is  far  advanced  in 
years,  apparently  belonging  to  that  older  generation 
which  had  wept  over  the  contrast  between  the  first  and 

1  Isa.  lx.  10,  11.  Comp.  xlix.  20,  8  Ezra  v.  1,  4.  "We,"  but  not 
lxxiii.  16;  lxvi.  20,  21.  Ezra  himself. 

2  Ezra  iv.  6-23. 


110  THE   RETUKN.  Lect.  XLIIL 

second  Temple  —  Haggai  —  who  bore  a  name  which  no 
H  .  and  Prophet  had  ever  assumed  before,  but  which 
zechanah.  henceforth  seems  to  have  become  familiar  — 
the  "  Messenger,  or  Angel,  of  the  Eternal." x  The  other 
must  have  been  quite  young,  being  the  grandson  of  one 
of  the  returning  exiles.  Zechariah  belonged  to  the 
priestly  tribe,  and  is  thus  remarkable  as  an  example  of 
the  union  of  the  two  functions,  which,  being  long  so 
widely  separated  in  ancient  times,  had  in  the  last  days 
of  the  Monarchy  gradually  become  blended  together. 

Unlike  the  uncertainty  which  attaches  to  the  dates 
of  the  older  Prophecies,  we  can  trace  the  year,  the 
month,  the  very  day  on  which  the  utterances  of  these 
two  seers  were  delivered. 

It  was  in  the  second  year  of  the  new  Persian  king, 
and  on  the  first2  day  of  the  sixth  month,  and  again 
b.c.  521.  on  *ne  one-and-twentieth  da}^  of  the  seventh 
OctubTr^'  month,  that  Haggai  appeared  before  the  chiefs 
b.c. 521,  °f  the  nation,  in  the  Temple  court;  in  the3 
November.  ejgllth  month  Zechariah  joined  him;  in4  the 
ninth  month,  on  the  four-and-twentieth  day,  Haggai  de- 
livered his  two  farewell  messages,  and  then  once  more 6 
b.c.  520,  followed  Zechariah,  first  in  the  eleventh  month, 
'l;''("'  ','f^  and  again,6  after  a  longer  interval,  in  the  ninth 
November.   month  0f  i\1Q  fourth  year  of  the  same  reign. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  true  prophetic  spirit  that, 
whilst  the  Chronicler  and  the  Prophets  are  equally  bent 
on  the  accomplishment  of  the  same  end  —  the  rebuild- 
ing of  the  Temple  —  the  only  obstacle  that  the  Chron- 
icler sees  is  the  opposition  of  external  adversaries ;  the 


1  Haggai  i.  13.     Compare  Malachi  4  Haggai  ii.  10. 
i.  1  (Lecture  XLV.).  6  Zech.  i.  7. 

2  Haggai  i.  1,  15  ;  ii.  1.  6  Zech.  vii.  1. 
8  Zech.  i.  1. 


Lect.  xliii.  haggai.  Ill 

chief  obstacle  that  the  Prophets  indicate  is  the  moral 
failure  of  their  own  fellow-citizens. 

In  each  of  the  two  Prophets  the  hope  and  the  lesson 
is  the  same,  but  it  comes  in  a  different  form.  To  the 
aged  Haggai  the  recollection  of  the  ancient *  _ 
Temple  is  always  present,  but  he  is  convinced 
that,  even  if  the  present  tranquillity  of  the  world' must 
needs  be  broken 2  up,  even  if  some  violent  convulsion 
should  once  again  shake  all  nations,  yet  abundant 
treasures3  would  flow  into  the  Temple.  If  its  own 
children  should  neglect  it,  the  heathen  whom  they  de- 
spised would  come  to  the  rescue. 

He  fiercely  rebukes,  not  the  captiousness  of  the  Sa- 
maritans, but  the  apathy  of  his  countrymen.  There 
were  those  who,  taking  advantage  of  the  long  delay, 
counted  with  a  curious  casuistry  the  number  of  years 
that  the  Captivity 4  ought  to  last ;  and,  finding  that  two 
were  still  wanting  to  complete  the  mystic  seventy, 
sheltered  themselves  behind  this  prophecy  to  indulge 
their  own  indifference  and  luxury.  "  The  time  is  not 
"  come,"  they  said,  "  the  time  for  the  Temple  to  be 
"built."  "The  time  not  come  for  this!"  exclaimed 
the  indignant  Prophet.  "Is  it  time  for  you  to  dwell5 
"in  your  panelled  houses,  and  the  Temple  to  lie 
"  waste  ?  "  There  were  those,  too,  who  had  been  tena- 
ciously holding  back  their  contributions,  and  hoarding 
up  the  produce  of  their  newly-acquired 6  fields.  With 
telling  effect  he  pointed  to  the  drought  that  had  with- 

1  Haggai  i.  3,  9.  in  Matt.  xxii.  10  and  Romans  xi.  14), 

2  Haggai  ii.  6,  7,  22.  that  what  the  Jews  would   not    do, 
8  Hao-crai  ii.  7.     The    word    ren-     the  heathen  would  do. 

dered  "  desire  of  all  nations  "  is  prop-  4  Haggai  ii.  2   (see  Dr.  Pussy  and 

erly  the  "  treasures  of  all  nations,"  Dr.  Henderson). 

and  the  idea  is  in  accordance  with  6  Haggai  i.  2,  3,  4. 

the  context  of  the  whole  passage  (as  fl  Haggai  i.  9,  10,  11  ;  ii.  15,  17. 


112  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XXIII. 

ered  up  corn,  and  vine,  and  olive,  and  fig,  on  hill  and 
in  valley,  and  broken  the  energy  both  of  man  and  beast. 
There  were  those  who,  whilst  carefully  stinting  the 
greater  work  of  the  Temple,  prided  themselves  on  the 
offerings  which  they  brought  to  the  freshly-consecrated1 
altar,  the  only  finished  part  of  the  sanctuary.  He 
warned  them  that  such  niggardly  selfishness  vitiated 
the  offering  which  they  brought : 

High  Heaven  disdains  the  lore 
Of  nicely-calculated  less  or  more. 

In  all  these  admonitions  a  profound  meaning  is 
wrapped  up.  It  may  be  that  there  is  but  little  of  the 
poetic  fire  of  the  First  or  Second  Isaiah.  But  there  is 
a  ponderous  and  simple  dignity  in  the  emphatic  reit- 
eration addressed  alike  to  every  class  of  the  community 
—  prince,  priest,  and  people.  Be  strong,  be  strong,  be 
strong?  "  Cleave,  stick  fast,  to  the  work  you  have  to 
"  do."  Or,  again,  Consider  your  ways,  consider,  con- 
sider, consider?  It  is  the  Hebrew  phrase  for  the  en- 
deavor, characteristic  of  the  gifted  seers  of  all  times, 
to  compel  their  hearers  to  turn  the  inside  of  their  hearts 
outward  to  their  own  view,  to  take  the  masks  from  off 
their  consciences,  to  "  see  life  steadily,  and  to  see  it 
"  whole." 

Far  more  explicit  and  florid  was  the  utterance  of  the 
younger  prophet4  who  came  to  Haggai's  assistance. 

Zechariah's  ideal  of  the  restored  Jerusalem  was  not 
of  the  returning  glory  of  the  old  time,  but  of  a  fresh 

1  Haggai  ii.  10-13.  the  first  part  (i.-viii.)  which  is  hero 

-   Haggai  ii.  4.  dealt  with.    The  latter  part  (ix.-xiii.) 

8  Haggai  i.  5,  7  ;  ii.  15,  17.     (See  has  no  bearing  on  this  period,  and, 

Dr.  Pusey.)  in  all  probability,  belongs  to  an  ear- 

4  In    speaking    of    Zechariah,    it  lier  prophet  (see  Lecture  XXXVU.) 

must  be  remembered  that  it  is  only 


Lect.  XLHL  ZECHAEIAH.  113 

and  prosperous  community  —  peaceful  old  age  carried 
to  its  utmost  verge,  and  leaning  in  venerable 
security  on  its  staff;  the  boys  and  girls,  in  child- 
'  like  mirth,  playing  in  the  streets ;  the  unfinished  walls 
not  a  cause  for  despondency,  but  a  pledge  that  they 
were  not  needed  in  a  city  of  which  the  sufficient  defence 
was  the  wall  of  Divine  Flame,  and  of  which  the  popu- 
lation was  to  outgrow  all  such  narrow  bounds. 

And,  as  might  be  expected  from  one  whose  prime 
had  been  spent  under  Persian  rule,  his  visions  were  all 
tinged  with  Persian  imagery.  He  saw  in  his  dreams 
"  the  seven  lamps,"  or  "  the  seven  eyes  "  —  as  of  the 
seven  Princes  who  had  admission  to  the  throne  of  Da- 
rius —  glancing  from  the  Divine  presence  through  the 
world.  He  saw  the  earth,  as  it  now  presented  itself  to 
the  enlarged  vision  of  those  who  had  listened  to  the 
Wise  Men  of  Chaldaea,  its  four  corners  growing  into  the 
four  horns  that  toss  and  gore  the  lesser  powers  of  the 
world ;  the  celestial  messengers 1  riding  on  horses,  red 
or  dappled,  hurrying  through  the  myrtle-groves  that 
then  clothed  the  base  of  Olivet,  or  from  the  four  quar- 
ters of  the  heavens,  driving  in  chariots,  each  with  its 
colored  horses,  to  and  fro,  across  the  Persian  Empire, 
as  in  the  vast 2  machinery  of  the  posts  for  which '  it 
was  celebrated,  and  bringing  back  the  tidings  of  war 
and  peace. 

But  he,  too,  poured  forth  his  invectives  against  the 
moral 3  depravity  which  annulled  the  value  of  the  cere- 
monial worship ;  he,  too,  held  out  the  prospect  of  har- 
vest and  vintage,  but  only  as  the  fitting  reward  of  a 
nobler  and  less  grovelling  spirit;  he,  too,  urged   the 

1  Zech.  i.  8-11;  iv.  10  ;  vi.  1-8.  a  7^.  j.  4.  iv.  9>  10>  n;  viii.  12, 

2  Herod.,  viii.  98.     Esther  iii.  13, 
15. 

15 


114  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XL1II 

duty  —  so  homely,  so  obvious,  yet  so  rarely  accepted  — 
that  every  man  and  every  nation  should  do  the  one 
work  set  before  them  at  the  special  time  of  their  ex- 
istence. 

The  two  leaders  on  whom  these  expectations  were 
concentrated,  were  now,  as  throughout  the  period  of 
the  Return,  the  Prince  Zerubbabel  and  the  High  Priest 
Joshua.  The  Prince  occupies  the  chief  place  in  the 
eye  of  the  older  Prophet,  the  Priest  in  the  eye  of  the 
younger  Prophet,  who  was  himself  of  priestly  descent.1 
They,  naturally,  were  the  chief  objects  of  the  machi- 
nations of  the  Samaritan  adversaries,  and  it  would 
seem  that  an  accusation  had  been  lodged  against  them 
in  the  Persian  Court.  Regardless  of  this  they  were 
pressed  by  their  prophetical  advisers  to  proceed  in 
their  work  ;  and  were  encouraged  by  every  good  omen 
that  the  prophetic  lore  of  the  period  could  produce. 

The  splendid2  attire  of  the  High  Priest,  studded 
with  jewels,  had  been  detained  at  Babylon,  or,  at  least, 
Joshua  the  could  not  be  worn  without  the  special  permis- 
High  Priest.  g-on  Qf  ^ie  King ;  and  until  the  accusations  had 
been  cleared  away  this  became  still  more  impossible.3 
But  the  day  was  coming,  as  it  was  seen  in  Zechariah's 
dream,  when  the  adversary  would  be  baffled,  the  cause 
won,  and  the  soiled  and  worn  clothing4  of  the  suffer- 
ing exile  be  replaced  by  the  old  magnificence  of 
Aaron  or  of  Zadok.  He,  with  the  Prince  Zerubbabel, 
were  to  be  together6  like  two  olive-trees  on  each  side 
of  the  golden  candlestick.  For  these  were  destined 
the  crowns  which,  by  a  happy  coincidence,  were  at  this 

1  See  Kuenen,  ii.  214.  But  this  *  For  the  importance  of  the  High 
is  modified  by  Ewald's  view.  Priest's  clothes  see  Lecture  XXXVL, 

2  Zech.  iii.  1-5.  XLIX. 

,  1  Esdras  iv.  54  ;  Ewald,  v.  85.  6  Zech.  iv.  1-5  (so  Ewald). 


Lect  xlhi.  zerubbabel.  115 

moment  brought1  as  offerings  from  the  wealthy  exiles 
of  Babylon. 

But  Zerubbabel  was  still  the  principal  figure.  Ac- 
cording to  a  later  tradition2  he  himself  was  at  this 
crisis  in  the  court  of  Darius,  and  laboring  for  his 
country's  good.  Of  this  the  contemporary  history 
knows  nothing.  But,  whether  in  Persia  or  in  Pales- 
tine, he  was  still  the  hope  and  stay  of  all.  "  Seed  of 
'•promise  sown  at  Babylon"  (as  his  name  implied), 
he   was   the    branch,    the    green    sprout,   that 

.  ,  .  _    Zerubbabel. 

should  shoot  forth  again  from  the  withered 
stem  of  Jesse.3  The  expectation  of  a  royal  succession 
)f  anointed  kings  did  not  cease  till  Zerubbabel  passed 
way.  But  his  memory  was  invested  with  a  nobler 
than  any  regal  dignity.  He  was  the  layer  of  the 
foundation-stone.  "  The  hands4  of  Zerubbabel  laid  the 
u  foundation  of  this  house,  and  his  hands  shall  finish 
"  it."  The  foundation-stone  which  had  been  laid 
amidst  such  small  beginnings  was  the  pledge  of  all 
that  was  to  follow.  On  it  were  fixed  the  seven  eyes 
of  Providence.  The  day  of  its  dedication  was  the  day 
of  "  small  things "  that  carried  with  it  the  hope  of 
the  great  future.  He  stands  forth  in  history  as  an 
example  of  the  sure  success  of  a  lofty  purpose,  se- 
cured by  the  reverse  of  the  Fabian  policy  —  not  by 
prudently  waiting  for  results,  but  by  boldly  acting 
at  the  moment.  He  and  characters  like  his  are 
truly  the  signet  rings 5  by  which  the  Eternal  purposes 
are  sealed.  By  no  external  power,  but  by  the  in- 
ternal strength  of  a  determined  will,  as  by  the  breath  6 
3f  the  wind  of  heaven  that  sweeps  all  before  it,  was 

1  Zech.  vi.  9-14  (Ewald).  4  Zecb.  iv.  9,  10. 

2  1  Esdras  v.  13.  6  Haggai  ii.  23. 
»  Zech.  iii.  3.  6  Haggai  i.  14. 


116  THE   RETURN.  Lect.  XLIII. 

every  obstacle  to  be  surmounted.  "  Who  art  thou  ?  " 
said  the  loyal  and  courageous  Prophet,  confronting 
the  Hill  Difficulty  that  rose  before  him  like  Mount 
Olivet.  "Who  art  thou,  0  great1  mountain?  before 
"  Zerubbabel  thou  shalt  become  a  level  plain."  It 
was  the  same  doctrine  as  that  which,  in  a  simpler 
but  sublimer  form,  and  with  a  far  more  extended 
fame,  has  been  placed  in  the  mouth  of  Zerubbabel 
himself  in  a  later  tradition,  which  represents  him,  in 
the  Court 2  of  the  Persian  King  at  this  very  juncture, 
in  answer  to  the  challenge  to  name  the  strongest  of 
all  things,  as  having  replied  in  words  which  in  their 
Latin  version  have  become  proverbial :  "  Great  is  the 
"  Truth  and  stronger  than  all  things  .  .  .  wine  is 
"  wicked,  the  king  is  wicked,  women  are  wicked  .  .  . 
"  but  the  Truth  endured  and  is  always  strong  .  .  . 
"  With  her  there  is  no  accepting  of  persons  or  re- 
"  wards  .  .  .  she  is  the  strength,  kingdom,  power, 
"  and  majesty  of  all  ages.  Blessed  be  the  God  of 
"Truth."  That  is  a  truly  Messianic  hope — into  that 
secret  the  "  seven  eyes "  may  well  have  looked.  It 
is  the  doctrine  especially  suited  to  every  age,  in 
which,  like  that  of  the  Return,  intrinsic  conviction 
is  the  mainstay  of  human  advancement. 

The  long  expected  day  at  last  arrived.  The  royal 
decree  cleared  away  all  obstacles.  "  The  mountain 
"  had  become  a  plain."  In  the  sixth  year  of  Darius, 
on  the  third  day  of  the  month  Adar,  the  Temple  was 
nnished.3 

Of  this  edifice,  the  result  of  such  long  and  bitter 
anxieties,  we  know  almost  nothing.     If  the  measure* 

1  Zech.  iv.  7.  the   proverb   into   the   yet    strongei 

2  1  Esdraa  iv.  33-41,  "  Magna  est    phrase,  "  prajvalebit." 
1  Veritas  et  pra) valet  "  —  altered  in         *  Ezra  vi.  13. 


Lect.  xliii.        completion  of  the  temple.  117 

ments  indicated  in  the  decree  of  Cyrus  were  acted 
upon 1  the  space  which  it  covered  and  the  Completion 
height  to  which  it  rose  were  larger  than  the  Temple, 

&  .  .  ,  B-  c  516, 

corresponding  dimensions  of  its  predecessor.  March. 
It  must  have  been  in  the  absence  of  metal  and  carv- 
ing that  it  was  deemed  so  inferior  to  the  First  Temple. 
The  Holy  of  Holies  was  empty.  The  ark,2  the 
cherubs,  the  tables  of  stone,  the  vase  of  manna,  the 
rod  of  Aaron  were  gone.  The  golden  shields  had 
vanished.  Even  the  High  Priest,  though  he  had  re- 
covered his  official  dress,  had  not  been  able  to  resume 
the  breastplate  with  the  oracular  3  stones.  Still,  there 
was  not  lacking  a  certain  splendor  and  solidity  befitting 
the  sanctuary  of  a  people  once  so  great,  and  of  a  re- 
ligion so  self-contained.  The  High  Priest  and  his 
family  were  well  lodged,  with  guest  chambers  and  store 
chambers  on  a  large  scale  for  the  Temple  furniture.4 
The  doors  of  the  Temple  were  of  gold.  In  three 
particulars  the  general  arrangements  differed  from 
those  of  the  ancient  sanctuary.  With  the  rigid  jeal- 
ousy which  rendered  this  period  hostile  to  all  which 
approached  the  Canaanite  worship,  there  were  no  more 
to  be  seen  in  the  courts  those  beautiful  clusters  of 
palm,6  and  olive,  and  cedar,  which  had  furnished  some 
of  the  most  striking  imagery  of  the  poetry  of  the 
Monarchy,  but  which  had  also  lent  a  shelter  to  the 
idolatrous  rites   that  at  times   penetrated   the  sacred 

1  Ezra  vi.  3.  Perhaps  these  are  (Rev.  xi.  19),  there  to  await  the 
specified  as  the  limits  not  to  be  coming  of  the  Messiah.  See  Ewald 
exceeded    (Professor   Rawlinson   in     on  Rev.  ii.  17. 

Speaker's  Commentary  on  Ezra).  3  Ezra  ii.  63  ;  Neh.  vii.  65.     See 

2  The  ark  was  supposed  either  to  Prideaux,  i.  148,  for  "  the  five  lost 
have   been   buried   by  Jeremiah  on     "things." 

Mount    Sinai  (2  Mace.  ii.  5)  or   to         *  Ezra  x.  6;  Neh.  xiii.  6,  5. 
have   been  carried   up  into  Heaven        5  See  Lecture  XXVII. 


118  THE  RETURN.  Lect.  XLIU 

enclosure.  "No  tree,"  "no1  grove,"  we  are  told, 
"was  to  be  seen  within  the  precincts."  Another 
feature  characteristic  of  the  period  was  the  fortress- 
tower  built  at  the  north-western  corner  of  the  sanct- 
uary, which,  serving  in  the  first  instance  as  a  residence 
of  the  Persian  governor,  became  in  later  days  the 
Tower  of  Antonia,  from  which,  in  like  manner,  the 
Roman  garrison  controlled  the  proud2  population  of 
Jerusalem.  Like  to  this  was  the  sign  of  subjection  to 
the  Persian  power  preserved  in  the  Eastern  gate  of 
the  Temple,  called  the  Gate  of  Susa,  from  its  con- 
taining 3  a  representation  of  the  Palace  of  the  Persian 
capital.  Thirdly,  the  court  of  the  worshippers  was4 
divided  for  the  first  time  into  two  compartments,  of 
which  the  outer  enclosure  was  known  as  the  court 
of  the  Gentiles  or  Heathens.  It  is  difficult  to  say  to 
which  of  the  two  counter-currents  of  the  time  this 
arrangement  was  due.  It  may  have  been  that  now, 
for  the  first  time,  the  offerings  from  the  Persian  kings 
and  the  surrounding  tribes  required  more  distinctly 
than  before  a  locality  where  they  could  be  received, 
and  that  the  enlarged  ideas  of  the  Prophets  of  the 
Captivity  were  thus  represented  in  outward  form; 
or  it  may  have  been  that,  with  the  exchange  of  the 
free  spirit  of  earlier  times  for  the  rigid  narrowness 
of  a  more  sectarian  age,  there  was  a  new  barrier 
erected.5 

The    consecration  of  the  new  Temple  was  not  de- 

1  Hecaticus  of  Abdera  (Joseplius,  if   the  Persian  capital  in  miniature 

e.  .!/<•),  i.  22.     See  De  Saulcy,  Art  were   thus   represented    at    Jerusa- 

Tudalque,  357.     Also,   "The   Tem-  1cm. 

'  ]il',"  in  J)lct.  of  the  Bible.  8  Middoth,  iii.  43  (Surenhushis,  v 

a  Neh.  ii.  8;   vii.  2.     It  is  called  326). 

liireh  (Greek  Bnrls),  which  is  else-  *  1  Mace.  ix.  54. 

where  the  word  used  for  Shushan,  as  5  Ezra  vi.  19,  22,  17. 


Lect.  xliii.        completion  of  the  temple.  119 

layed,  like  that  of  Solomon,  to  meet  the  great  au- 
tumnal festival  of  the  Jewish  year.  It  was  enough 
that  it  should  coincide  with  the  earlier,  yet  hardly  less 
solemn,  feast  which  fell  in  the  spring  —  the  Passover.1 
There  was  a  general  sacrifice  of  one  hundred  oxen, 
two  hundred  rams,  four  hundred  lambs ;  but  the  vic- 
tims which  attracted  most  attention  were  twelve  vener- 
able goats,  chosen  to  represent  the  twelve  tribes,  as  an 
indication  that  the  whole  nation,  though  only  repre- 
sented in  Judah  and  Benjamin,  still  claimed  the  sanc- 
tuary as  their  own.2 

It  was  a  .season  of  universal  festivity.  A  few  months 
before  its  close  a  deputation3  from  Bethel  had  Festive 
come  to  inquire  whether  the  four4  days  of  $ atrhecter 
fasting  and  mourning  established  during  the occasion- 
Captivity  were  still  to  be  observed ;  and  the  answer  of 
the  Prophet  was  an  indignant  repudiation  of  these  re- 
ligious mockeries  of  sentiments  which  were  not  felt. 
Even  during  the  exile  they  had  been  but  hollow  ob- 
servances —  now  they  were  still  more  unreal.5  In  the 
later  years  of  Judaism  these  four  melancholy  com- 
memorations of  the  sorrows  and  sins  of  Judah  have 
been  revived ;  but  then,  and  in  that  freshness  of  re- 
turning happiness,  the  Prophet  had  the  boldness  to 
reverse  their  meaning  —  to  make  them  feasts  of  joy 
and  gladness  —  holy  days,  of  which  the  only  celebration 
should  be  the  love  of  truth  and  peace. 

In  accordance  with  this  natural  burst  of  joy  after  so 
hard-won  a  struggle  are  the  Psalms,  some  of  which,  by 

1  Ezra  vi.  19,  22,  17.  which  forbade  the  new  garment  to 

2  Ezra  vi.  1 7.  be  patched   to  the  old,  or  the  new 

3  Zech.  vii.  2,  3,  5;  (Heb.)  viii.     wine  to  be  poured  into  the  old  ves- 
19.  sels,  Matt.  ix.   15,    Similia  similibiis 

4  See  Lecture  XL.  conjungantur. 
6  It  was  the  same   moral  as  that 


120  THE  RETURN.  Lect.  XLIU. 

natural  inference,  some  by  universal  consent,  belong  to 
this  period.  Those  which  either  before  or  now  were 
composed  for  the  Passover  could  never  have  been  sung 
with  such  zest  as  on  this,  the  first  great  Paschal  festival 
after   the    re-establishment   of   their   worship.      They 

mio-ht  well  be  reminded  of  the  time  when  Israel  came 

o 

out  of  Egypt  and  the  house-  of  Jacob  from  a  strange 
land ;  and  the  call  to  trust  in  the  Shield  and  Helper 
of  their  country  would  well  be  addressed  to  the  whole 
nation,  to  the  priestly  tribe,  and  to  those  awestricken 
spectators  who  stood  as  it  were  outside  "and  feared 
"  the  God  of  Judah." 

But  those  which  (at  least  as  far  back  as  the  time  of 
the  Greek  translation)  bore  the  names  of  the  two 
Prophets  of  this  period  were  the  jubilant  songs,  of 
which  the  first  words  have  been  preserved  in  their 
Hebrew  form  through  all  Christian  Psalmody  :  "  Halle- 
"lujah,"2  "Praise  the  Eternal."  Other  hymns  may 
have  been  added  to  that  sacred  book  as  years  rolled 
on  ;  but  none  were  thought  so  fit  to  close  the  Psalter, 
which  a  climax  of  delight,  as  the  four  exuberant  Psalms 
with  sum  up  the  joy  of  the  Return.  There,  more  than 
even  in  any  other  portion  of  the  mirthful  Psalter,  we 
hear  the  clash  of  cymbal,  and  twang  of  harp,  and  blast 
of  trumpet,  and  see  the  gay  dances  round  the  Temple 
courts,  and  join  in  the  invitation  to  all  orders  of 
society,  to  all  nations  of  the  earth,  to  all  created 
things,  to  share  in  the  happiness  of  the  happy  human 
heart.  Centuries  afterwards,  when  a  scrupulous  Pontiff 
hesitated  whether  he  should  accord  the  use  of  the 
sacred  Scriptures  in  their  own  tongue  to  the  nations 
on  the  banks  of  the  Danube,  he  was  converted,  in  de- 

1  Psalm  cxiv.-cxv.  —  in  LXX.  one         2  Ps.  cxlvi.  —  Ps.  cl.  (LXX.) 
Psalm. 


Lect.  xliii.  the  temple.  121 

fiance  of  the  rule  of  his  own  Church,  by  the  compre- 
hensive and  catholic  words  with  which  Haggai  and 
Zechariah  wound  up  their  appeal  to  all  nature  on  that 
day  —  "  Let  every  thing  that  hath  breath  praise  the 
"  Eternal."  1  It  has  been  well  said  that,  "  whereas 
"  much  good  poetry  is  profoundly  melancholy,  the  life 
"  of  the  generality  of  men  is  such  that  in  literature 
"  they  require  joy.  Such  joy  is  breathed  so  freely  and 
"  with  such  a  genuine  burst  through  the  period  of  the 
"  Restoration  of  Israel  that  we  cannot  read  either  its 
"  Prophets  or  its  Psalmists  without  catching  its  glow. 
"  The  power  of  animation  and  consolation  in  such 
"  thoughts,  which,  beginning  by  giving  us  a  hold  on 
"  a  single  great  work,  like  that  of  the  Evangelical 
"  Prophet,  end  with  giving  us  a  hold  on  the  history  of 
"  the  human  spirit,  and  the  course,  drift,  and  scope  of 
"  the  career  of  our  race  as  a  whole,  cannot  be  over- 
"  estimated."  2 

1  Psalm    cl.  6.     See   Lectures  on         2  Matthew    Arnold,     The     Great 
the  Eastern  Church  (Lecture  IX.).       Prophecy  of  the.  Restoration,  p.  33. 
16 


NOTE  ON  THE  BOOKS  OF  EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH. 


It  is  convenient,  without  entering  on  the  detailed  analysis  of  these  two 
books,  to  indicate  the  main  features  of  their  composition. 

1.  In  the  original  Hebrew  Canon  they  form,  not  two  books,  but  one. 

2.  In  this  one  book  is  discoverable  the  agglomeration  of  four  distinct 
•■  elements;  which  is  instructive  as  an  undoubted  instance  of  the 

composite  structure  shared  by  other  books  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  where  it  is  not  so  distinctly  traceable. 

3.  These  component  parts  are  as  follows  : 

a  The  portions  written   by  the  Chronicler  —  the  same  as  the 

compiler  of  the  Books  of  Chronicles  (comp.  Ezra  i.  1,  2; 

2    Chron.    xxxvi.    22,    23)  —  Ezra  i.,    iii.-vi.;    Neh.    xii. 

1-26. 

b  Ezra's  own  narrative,  Ezra  vii.-x. 

c  Nehemiah's  own  narrative,  Neh.  i.-vii.  5;   viii.-xi.  2;  xii. 

27-xiii.  31. 
d  Archives;  Ezra  ii.;  Neh.  vii.  6-73;  xi.  3-36. 
In  the  divisions  a,  b,  and  c,  it  may  be  questioned  whether  Ezra  vii.  1-26; 
x.  1-44;  Nehemiah  viii.  1-xi.  2;  vii.  27-xiii.  3  (in  which  Ezra  and  Nehe- 
miah  are  described  in  the  third  person)  belong  to  another  narrative  inter- 
woven by  the  Chronicler  who  compiled  the  whole  book. 

Of  the  two  Apocryphal  Books,  that  in  which  the  English  version  is  called 
"  the  First  Book  of  Esdras,"  and  in  the  Vulgate  the  Third,  is  a  compila- 
tion of  the  history  of  Ezra  with  additions  regarding  Zerubbabel.  Being  in 
Greek,  it  must  be  after  the  time  of  Alexander;  being  used  by  Josephus  ai 
of  equal  authority  with  the  canonical  books,  it  must  be  before  the  Christian 
era.     Beyond  these  two  landmarks  there  is  nothing  to  fix  the  date. 

That  which  in  the  English  version  is  the  Second  Book  of  Esdras,  other- 
wise called  the  Fourth,  but  more  properly  the  "  Apocalypse  of  Ezra,"  i3 
not  received  into  the  Vulgate.  It  exists  only  in  the  Latin  version  of  the 
lost  Greek,  and  its  date  is  probably  in  the  beginning  of  the  second  century 
of  our  era. 


LECTURE  XLIV. 

EZRA     AND     NEHEMIAH. 


AUTHORITIES. 

CONTEMPORARY   HISTORY. 

Ezra  vii. — x. ;  Nehemiah  i. — xiii.  (called  in  the  Vuigate  the  First 
and  Second  Books  of  Esdras.) 

TRADITIONS. 

1.  Josephus,  Ant.,  xi.  5. 

2.  Fabricius,  Codex  Pseudepigr.,  pp.  1145 — 1164. 

3.  1  Esdras  (see  previous  note). 

4.  2  Esdras  (see  previous  note). 

5.  2  Mace.  i.  18-36  ;  ii.  13. 

6.  Koran,  c.  ii.  261  (see  Lane's  Selections,  pp.  102,  143). 
Talmudical  traditions  in  Derenbourg's  ffistoire  de  la  Palestine, 

c  i.,  ii. 


LECTURE   XLIV. 

EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH. 

Seventy  yeaks  of  total  silence  pass  over  the  history 
from  the  completion  of  the  building  of  the  B.  c.  516_ 
Temple  till  the  next  event  in  Palestine  of 459' 
which  there  is  any  certain  record.  During  that  time 
Zerubbabel  had  passed  from  the  scene  —  ac-  The  new 
cording  to  the  Jewish  tradition  had  even  re-  colony- 
turned  to  his  native  Babylon  2  to  die.  His  descendants 
lingered  on,2  but  without  authority  —  and  in  his  place 
no  native  Prince  had  either  arisen  by  his  own  influence, 
or  been  appointed  by  the  Persian  Government,  to  the 
fiist  place  in  the  new  settlement.  The  line  of  the  High 
Priesthood  was  continued  from  Joshua  the  son  of  Joze- 
dek ;  and  now,  for  the  first  time  since  the  death  of  Eli, 
did  the  chief  authority  of  the  nation  pass  into  the  hands 
of  the  caste  of  Aaron,  though  still  under  the  general 
control  of  the  Persian  Governor,  native  or  not,  who 
lived  in  the  fortress  overlooking  the  Temple.3  The  col- 
onists settled  down  into  their  usual  habits.  They  lived 
on  easy  terms  with  their  neighbors,  some  of  the  chief 
families  intermarrying  with  them.  Eliashib,  the  High 
Priest,  who  lived  in  large  apartments  within  the  Tem- 
ple precincts,  was  doubly  connected  with  the  two  na- 
tive Princes,  who,  at  Samaria  and  in  the  Transjordanic 


1  Seder    Olam   (Ewald,   v.   118); 

2  1    Chron.   iii.  17-20;    Luke  iii. 

erenbourg,  20,  21. 

23-32;  Ewald,  v.  119,  120. 

8  Nek.  vii.  5;  v.  15. 

126  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

Amnion,  represented  the  Persian  Government.1  The 
tide  of  commerce  again  began  to  flow  through  the 
streets  of  Jerusalem.  Asses  heavily  laden  with  sheaves 
of  corn  and  clusters  of  fruit  might  be  seen  passing  into 
the  city,  even  on  the  sacred  day  of  rest.  Tyrian  sail- 
ors also  were  there,  selling  their  fish,  and  other  articles 
of  Phoenician  trade.  Goldsmiths' 2  and  money-chang- 
ers' and  spice-dealers'  stalls  were  established  in  the 
bazaars. 

The  poorer  classes  had,  many  of  them,  sunk  into  a 
state  of  serfage  to  the  richer  nobles,  in  whom  the  lux- 
urious and  insolent  practices  of  the  old  aristocracy,  de- 
nounced by  the  earlier  Prophets,  began  to  reappear. 
Jerusalem  itself  was  thinly  inhabited,  and  seemed  to 
have  stopped  short  in  the  career  which,  under  the  first 
settlers,  had  been  opening  before  it.8  If  we  could  trust 
the  conjecture  of  Ewalcl  that  the  eighty-ninth  Psalm 
expresses  the  hope  of  a  Davidic  king  in  the  person  of 
Zerubbabel  and  his  children,  and  the  extinction  of  that 
hope  in  the  troubles  of  the  time,  we  should  have  a 
momentary  vision  of  the  shadows  which  closed  round 
the  reviving  city.4  It  is  certain  that,  whether  from 
the  original  weakness  of  the  rising  settlement,  or  from 
some  fresh  inroad  of  the  surrounding  tribes,  of  which 
we  have  no  distinct  notice,  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  were 
still  unfinished ;  huge  gaps  left  in  them  where  the 
gates  had  been  burnt  and  not  repaired  ;  the  sides  of  its 
rocky  hills  cumbered  with  their  ruins ;  the  Temple, 
though  completed,  still  with  its  furniture  scanty  and  its 
ornaments  inadequate.  As  before,  in  the  time  of 
Zechariah,  when  the  arrival  of  three  wealthy  Babylo- 
lian  Jews  filled  the  little  colon}'  with  delight,  so  now 

1  Ni'h.  xiii.  4.  8  Neh.  v.  6-10;  vii.  4  ;  xi.  2 

8  Neh.  xiii.  15-17;  iii.  8,  31.  *  Psalm  lxxxix.  20,  35,  39. 


Lect.  XLIV.  EZRA.  127 

its  hopes  were  fixed  on  their  countrymen  in  those  dis- 
tant settlements.  The  centre  of  the  revived  nation  was 
in  its  own  ancient  capital ;  but  its  resources,  its  civiliza- 
tion, were  in  the  Court  of  Persia.1  There  were  two  of 
these  voluntary  exiles  who  have  left  an  authentic  rec- 
ord of  the  passionate  love  for  their  unseen  country, 
which,  amidst  much  that  is  disappointing  in  their  ca- 
reer and  narrow  in  their  horizon,  compared  with  the 
great  Prophets  of  the  Monarchy  or  of  the  earlier  period 
of  the  Captivity,  yet  stamps  every  step  of  their  course 
with  a  pathetic  interest,  the  more  moving  because  its 
expression  is  so  incontestably  genuine. 

The  first  of  them  was  Ezra.     He  was  of  the  priestly 
tribe,  but  his  chief  characteristic  —  which  al-  ^ 

Ezra,  b  c. 

ready  had  gained  him  a  fame  in  the  far-off  East 459> 
—  was  that  he  was  the  most  conspicuous  of  that  order 
of  men  which  now  first  came  into  prominence,  and  des- 
tined afterwards  to  play  so  fatal  a  part  in  the  religious 
history  of  Judaism  —  the  Scribes.  The  Scribes,  or 
Sopherim,  had  in  some  form  long  existed.  They  had 
originally  been  the  registrars  or  clerks  by  whom  the 
people  or  the  army  were  numbered.2  They  then  rose 
into  higher  importance  as  royal  secretaries.  Then,  as 
the  Prophetic  writings  took  a  more  literary  form,  and 
the  calamities  of  the  falling  Monarchy  and  the  subse- 
quent exile  stimulated  the  nation  to  collect  and  register 
the  fragments  of  the  past,  they  took  a  conspicuous 
place  by  the  side  of  the  Prophets.  Such  an  one  in  the 
earlier  generation  had  been  Baruch,  the  friend  of  Jere- 
miah. Such  an  one  now  was  Ezra  in  the  Jewish 
schools  3  of  Chaldaaan  learning,  fostered  by  the  atmos- 

1  Yearly   gifts    came    across    the         2  See   "  Scribes,"    in  Diet,  of  the 
iesert  fPhilo,  Leg.  ad  Caium,  1013).     Bible. 

8  Ezra  vii.  10,  12. 


128  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV 

phere  of  the  famous  scientific  caste  which  had  its  seat 
in  Borsippa  or  in  the  temple  of  Bel,  and  in  which  after- 
wards sprang  up  the  Chaldee  Paraphrase  and  the  Baby- 
lonian Talmud.  Ezra  had  devoted  himself  to  the  study 
of  "  The  Law,"  in  whatever  form  it  was  then  known, 
and  was  seized  with  a  burning  desire  to  enforce  its  pro- 
visions amongst  his  own  countrymen.  To  him  Arta- 
xerxes  of  the  Long  Arms1  —  the  mild  sovereign  who 
now  ruled  the  Persian  Empire  —  intrusted  the  double 
charge  of  providing  for  the  due  execution  of  the  na- 
tional code  and  for  the  proper  adornment  of  the  na- 
tional sanctuary. 

It  was  almost  a  second  return  that  Ezra  thus  organ- 
joumcy  of  ized.  There  was  the  same  terror  of  the  dan- 
459™' B"  '  gers  of  the  long  journey,  the  same  shrinking 
back  of  the  sacerdotal  caste.  "  There  was  not  one  of 
"  the  sons  of  Levi."  But  the  cheering  confidence, 
which  on  the  first  return  had  been  inspired  by  Ezekiel 
and  the  Evangelical  Prophet,  was  on  this  return  sup- 
plied by  Ezra  himself.  He  clings  to  the  unseen  Sup- 
port by  the  same  expressive  figure  that  had  been  first 
specially  indicated  by  Ezekiel,  "  The  Hand  of  God." 2 
"  I  was  strengthened,"  said  the  solitary  exile  to  himself, 
"  as  the  Hand  of  my  God  was  upon  me."  "  The  good 
"  Hand  of  our  God  was  upon  us."  "  The  Hand  of 
"  God  is  upon  all  them  for  good  that  seek  Him." 
"  The  Hand  of  our  God  was  upon  us."  It  is  as  if  he 
felt  the  returning  touch  of  those  Invisible  Fingers  at 
every  stage  of  the  journey.  On  the  twelfth  day  they 
halted  on  their  road  at  "the  river  of  Ahava ;  "  in  all 


1  Artaxerxes  Makrocheir  in  Greek,  2  Ezek.  xxxvii.  1;  Ezra  vii.  6,  9 
Ardishir  Dirozdust  in  Persian.  Mai-  viii.  22,  31.  Comp.  1  Kings  xviii 
:olm's  Persia,  i.  67.  46. 


Lect.  xliv.  mixed  marriages.  129 

probability1  the  well-known  spot  where  caravans 
make  their  plunge  into  the  desert,  where,  from  the 
bitumen  springs  of  "His"  or  "Hit,"  the  Euphrates 
bends  northwards.  There,  with  a  noble  magnanimity, 
throwing  himself  on  the  Divine  protection,  he  declined 
the  escort  which  had  accompanied  the  former  expedi- 
tion, and  braved  the  terrors  of  the  wandering  Arabs 
alone.  It  was  in  the  flowery  spring  when  they  crossed 
the  desert,  and  they  reached  Jerusalem  in  the  mid- 
summer heats. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  predominant  idea  in  Ezra's 
mind  throughout  this  period  that,  after  a  brief  summary 
of  the  reception  of  the  gifts  and  offerings  to  the  Temple, 
his  whole  energies  pass  immediately  into  the  other  and 
chief  purpose  for  which  he  had  come.  He  was  a  Scribe 
first  and  a  Priest  afterwards.  The  Temple  was  an  ob- 
ject of  his  veneration.  But  it  was  nothing  compared 
to  "  The  Law."  And  the  vehemence  of  his  attachment 
to  it  is  the  more  strongly  brought  out  by  the  The  mixed 
comparatively  trivial,  and  in  some  respects  marnases- 
questionable,  occasion  that  called  it  forth.  It  was  the 
controversy  which,  from  this  time  forward,  was  to  agi- 
tate in  various  forms  the  Jewish  community  till  its  re- 
ligious life  was  broken  asunder  —  its  relation  to  the 
heathen  population  around.  It  may  be  that  at  that 
time  the  larger,  nobler,  freer  views  which  belonged  to 
the  earlier  and  also  to  the  later  portion  of  Jewish  his- 
tory were  impossible.  There  had  not  been  the  faintest 
murmur  audible  when  the  ancestors  of  David  once  and 
again  married  into  a  Moabite  family,  nor  when  David 2 
took  amongst  his  wives  a  daughter  of  Geshur ;  nor  is 

1  See  "  Ahava"  in  Dictionary  of         2  Ruth  i.  4;  iv.  13;  2  Sam.  iii.  3. 
(he  Bible.     Bu_  it  is  much  contested 
in  Ewald,  v.  136. 

17 


130  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV 

there  a  more  exuberant  Psalm 1  than  that  which  cele- 
brates the  union  of  an  Israelite  King  with  an  Egyptian 
or  Tyrian  Princess.  Even  if  the  patriarchal  alliance  of 
Abraham  with  the  Egyptian  Hagar  or  the  Arabian 
Keturah,  or  the  marriage  of  Moses  with  the  Midianite 
or  the  Ethiopian,  provoked  a  passing  censure,  it  was 
instantly  and  strongly  repelled  by  the  loftier  tone  of 
the  sacred  narrative.  Nor  is  there  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment a  passage  more  redolent  of  acknowledged  wisdom 
and  charity  than  that  in  wThich  the  Rabbi  of  Tarsus  2  tol- 
erates the  union  of  the  heathen  husband  and  the  be- 
lieving wife.  Nor  are  there  more  critical  incidents  in 
Christian  history  than  those  which  record  the  conse- 
quences which  ■  flowed  from  the  union  of  Clovis  with 
Clotilda,  or  of  Ethelbert  with  Bertha.  But  it  was  the 
peculiarity  of  the  age  through  which  the  religion  of 
Israel  was  now  passing  that  to  the  more  keenly-strung 
susceptibilities  of  the  nation  every  approach  to  the  ex- 
ternal world  was  felt  as  a  shock  and  pollution.  The 
large  freedom  of  Isaiah,  whether  the  First  or  Second, 
was  gone ;  the  charity  of  Paul,  and  of  a  Greater  than 
Paul,  had  not  arisen.  The  energy  of  Deborah  and  of 
Elijah  remained  ;  but  for  the  present  generation  it  was 

destined  to  fight,  not  against  a  cruel  oppressor 
B.  c.  459.  .  Q  .    °  .  LL 

or  an  immoral  worship,  but  against  the  sancti- 
ties of  domestic  union  with  their  neighbor  tribes  — 
dangerous,  possibly,  in  their  consequences,  but  innocent 
in  themselves.  We  are  called  upon  to  bestow  an  ad- 
miration, genuine,  but  limited,  on  a  zeal  which  reminds 
us  of  Dunstan  and  Hildebrand  rather  than  of  the  Primi- 
tive or  the  Reforming  Church.  It  is  Ezra  himself  who 
places  before  us  the  scene  with  a  vividness  which  shows 
us  that,  if  the  spirit  of  the  ancient  days  is  altered,  their 

i  Pealm  xlv.  12,  16.  2  1  Cor.  vii.  14. 


Lect.  xliv.  mixed  marriages.  131 

style  still  retains  its  inimitable  vigor  ;  and,  though  he 
did  not  compose1  the  narative  till  many  years  after- 
wards, the  consciousness  of  the  importance  of  the  event 
burnished  the  recollection  of  it  with  the  freshness  as  of 
yesterday. 

The  festival  was  already  closed,  in  which  the  new 
vessels  had  been  duly  received  and  weighed,  the  twelve 
oxen  and  twelve  goats  for  the  twelve  tribes  with  the 
attendant  flocks  of  sheep  been  slaughtered,  the  commis- 
sions to  the  Persian  governors  delivered,  and  Ezra  2  was 
established  as  the  chief  judge  over  the  whole  commu- 
nity. This  was  on  the  fourth  day  of  the  fifth 
month ;  the  sixth,  the  seventh,  the  eighth 
month  rolled  away,  and  nothing  had  occurred  to  rulfie 
the  tranquil  tenor  of  the  restoration  of  the  Temple  ar- 
rangements. But  on  the  sixteenth  day  of  the  ninth 
month  came  a  sudden  storm.  The  copies  of 
the  Law  which  Ezra  had  brought  from  Chal-  Deccmben 
dasa  must  have  become  in  the  interval  known  to  the 
settlement  in  Palestine,  and  those  copies,  whatever  their 
date,  must  have  contained  the  prohibitions  of  mixed 
marriages  which,  it  would  seem,  had  been  wholly  un- 
known or  ignored  down  to  that  time,  and  overruled  by 
the  practice  of  centuries.  Suddenly  the  chiefs  of  the 
community  appeared  before  Ezra  as  he  stood  in  the 
Temple  court  and  confessed  that  such  usages  had  pene- 
trated into  every  class  of  their  society.  In  the  stricter 
practices  of  his  Babylonian  countrymen  he  had  seen 
nothing  like  it.  The  shock  was  in  proportion  to  the 
surprise  :    he    tore   his   outer  cloak   from  top  to  bot- 

1  Ezra  viii.  1 ;  ix.  1 .  Sublime    Porte   well   illustrates  this 

2  Ezra   vii.   25.     The   quasi-inde-     position,  as  well  as  that  of  the  later 
tendent   jurisdiction   of    the   Patri-     High  Priests. 

irchate  of  Constantinople  under  the 


132  EZEA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

torn ;  he  tore  his  inner  garments  no  less ;  he  plucked 
off  the  long  tresses  of  his  sacerdotal  locks,  the  long 
flakes  of  his  sacerdotal  beard,  and  thus,  with  dishevelled 
head  and  half-clothed  limbs,  he  sank  on  the  ground, 
crouched  like  one  thunderstruck,  through  the  whole  of 
that  day.  Round  him  were  drawn  those  whom  sympa- 
thy for  the  same  cause  filled  with  a  like  sentiment,  and 
he  and  they  sate  silent  till  the  sunset  called  for  the 
evening  sacrifice,  and  the  Temple  courts  began  once 
more  to  be  crowded  with  promiscuous  worshippers. 
Then  Ezra  rose  from  his  sitting  posture,  and  all  tattered 
and  torn  as  were  his  priestly  garments,  he  fell  on  his 
bended  knees  (that  attitude  of  devotion  so  unusual  in 
Eastern  countries)  and  stretched  forth  his  open  hands, 
with  the  gesture  common  to  the  whole  ancient  world 
(now  lost  everywhere  except  amongst  the  Mussulmans), 
and  poured  forth  his  agonized  prayer  to  the  God  whose 
law  had  thus  been  offended.1  As  he  prayed  his  emo- 
tion increased,  and  with  his  articulate  words  were  min- 
gled his  passionate  tears ;  and  by  the  time  that  he  had 
concluded,  a  sympathetic  thrill  had  run  through  the 
whole  community.2 

Crowds  came  streaming  into  the  Temple  court  and 
gathered  round  him,  and  they  too  joined  their  cries  and 
terns  with  1 1  is.  Full-grown  men  and  women  were  there, 
and  youths;  and  under  the  excitement  of  the  moment, 
led  by  one  whose  name  was  deemed  worthy  of  special 
praise  as  having  given  the  first  signal,  Shechaniah,  the 
son  of  Elam,  they  placed  themselves  under  Ezra's  or- 
ders :  "Arise,  for  this  mailer  belongeth  unto  thee  ;  we 
"  will  also  be  with  thee;  be  of  good  courage  and  do  it." 
At  once  the  prostrate,  weeping  mourner  sprang  to  his 
feet,  and  exacted  the  oath  from  all  present,  that  they 

1  Ezra  ix.  3-5.  2  Ezra  x.  1-6. 


Lect.  xliv.  the  constitution.  133 

would  assist  his  efforts ;  and  having  done  this,  he  disap 
peared,  and  withdrew  into  the  chamber  of  the  b  c  ^ 
High  Priest's  son,  in  one  of  the  upper  stories  of 
the  Temple,  and  there  remained  in  complete  abstinence, 
even  from  bread  and  water,  for  the  three  days  which 
were  to  elapse  before  a  solemn  assembly  could  be  con- 
vened to  ascertain  the  national  sentiment. 

It  is  interesting  at  this  point  to  indicate  the  form  of 
the  Jewish  constitution,  so  far  as  it  can  be  dimly  The  con_ 
discerned  at  this  period.  The  Persian x  satrap  stitutioQ- 
who  ruled  over  the  whole  country  west  of  the  Euphra- 
tes was  the  supreme  authority.  Under  him  were  the 
various  governors  or  Pashas 2  in  the  chief  Syrian  towns. 
The  Persian  garrison  was  in  the  central  fortress  of  Sa- 
maria.3 But  within  their  general  jurisdiction  the  Jew- 
ish community  possessed  an  organization  of  its  own. 
The  princely  dignity  of  the  Anointed  House  of  David 
had  died  with  Zerubbabel.  The  High  Priesthood,  per- 
haps from  the  unworthy  character  of  its  occupants, 
lapsed,  during  almost  the  whole  period  of  the  Persian 
dominion,  into  political  and  social  insignificance.  The 
ordinary  government  was  in  the  hands  of  "  the  Elders  " 
or  "  Chiefs,"  4  who  were  themselves  subordinate  or  co- 
ordinate to  "  the  Inspectors  " 5  of  the  various  districts ; 
two  offices  which  had  existed  in  germ 6  at  the  time  of 
the  Return  —  even  entering  in  an  idealized  form  into 
the  visions  of  the  Evangelical  Prophet  —  two  offices 
whose  names  as  rendered  into  Greek,  "  presbyter  "  and 

1  Ezra  v.  1-13.  lated  "exactors,"  in  Greek  cW^ou?, 

2  Ezra  vi.  7;  viii.   36;  Nehemiah  and  as  such  applied  by  Clement  of 
H.  io,  19.  Rome  (i.  42)  to  "  Bishops  "  —  alter- 

3  Neb.    iv.    2.      See    Herzfeld,   i.  ing,  however,  apx^Tas  into  8io.k6vovs 
378-387.  to  suit  tbe  purpose  of  his  argument. 

4  Ezra  x.  8,  14.  For  the  whole  question  of  the  con- 
6  Neh.  xi.  6,  14,  16.  stitution  at  this  time,  see  Herzfeld,  i. 
'  Tsa.  lx.  12.     In    English   trans-     253-260. 


134  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV 

u  bishop  "  —  under  circumstances  how  different,  and 
with  a  fate  how  little  foreseen !  —  passed  into  the  Chris- 
tian Church,  to  be  the  material  of  controversies  which 
would  have  lost  half  their  bitterness  and  half  their 
meaning  had  the  homely  origin  of  the  titles  when  they 
first  appeared  been  recognized. 

But  it  would  seem  that  there  was  still  on  great  emer- 
The  as-       geneies  the  power  or  the  necessity  of  a  "  pro- 

semblv,  or  .  *  L 

Ecciesia.  "  vocatio  ad  populum  —  an  appeal  to  the 
whole  people.  Accordingly,  the  scene  which  followed 
is  a  striking  instance,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  deference 
paid  to  such  a  spontaneous  and  deliberate  act  of  the 
popular  voice  ;  on  the  other  hand,  of  the  powerful 
impression  which  the  community  received  from  the 
character  and  demeanor  of  a  single  individual.  The 
summons  convoked,  as  one  man,  all  the  outlying  in- 
habitants of  the  hills  of  Juclah  and  Benjamin.  They 
congregated  in  the  open  square  in  front  of  the  Temple 
gate.1  And  here  again  we  stumble  on  the  first  distinct 
notice  of  that  popular  element  which,  deriving,  in 
later  times,  its  Grecian  name  from  the  Athenian  as- 
semblies, passed  into  the  early  Christian  community 
under  the  title  of  Ecciesia,2  and  thus  became  the  germ 
of  that  idea  of  the  "  Church  "  in  which  the  voice  of 
the  people  or  laity  had  supreme  control  over  the 
teachers  and  rulers  of  the  society  —  an  idea  preserved 
in  the  first  century  in  its  integrity,  retained  in  some 
occasional  instances  down  to  the  eleventh  century,  then 
almost  entirely  superseded  by  the  mediaeval  schemes  of 
ecclesiastical  polity,  until  it  reappeared,  although  in 
modified  and  disjointed  forms,  in  the  sixteenth  and  fol- 
lowing centuries. 

1  Ezra  x.  9  (1Kb.).     Comp.  Jose-         2  Ezra  x.  9-14. 
phus,  B.  ./.,  ii.  17,  2. 


Lect.  XLIV. 


THE  ASSEMBLY.  135 


It  was  now  the  twentieth  day  of  the  ninth  month,  in 
the  depth  of  the  Syrian  winter :  the  cold  rain 

1  *1  December. 

fell  in  torrents  ;  and  the  people,  trembling  un- 
der the  remonstrance  of  their  consecrated  chief,  and 
shivering  in  the  raw,  ungenial  weather,  confirmed  the 
appointment  of  a  commission  of  inquiry,  which  should 
investigate  every  case  of  unlawful  marriage,  and  com- 
pel the  husbands  to  part  with  their  wives  and  even 
with  their  children.  By  the  beginning  of  the 
new  year  the  list  was  drawn  up,  including  four 
of  the  priestly  family,  and  about  fifty  more.  "  All  of 
"  these  had 1  taken  strange  wives,  and  some  of  them  had 
"  wives  by  whom  they  had  children."  With  these  dry 
words  Ezra  winds  up  the  narrative  of  the  signal  victory 
which  he  had  attained  over  the  natural  affections  of  the 
whole  community;  a  victory  doubtless  which  had  its 
share  in  keeping  alive  the  spirit  of  exclusive  patriotism 
and  of  uncompromising  zeal  that  was  to  play  at  times 
so  brilliant  and  at  times  so  dark  a  part  in  the  coining 
period  of  Jewish  history,  but  which,  in  its  total  absence 
of  human  tenderness,  presents  a  dismal  contrast  to  that 
pathetic  passage  of  the  primitive  records  of  their  race 
which  tells  us  how  when  their  first  father  drove  out  the 
foreign  handmaid  with  her  son  into  the  desert,  it  "  was 
"  very  grievous  in  his  sight,"  and  "  he  rose  up  early  in 
"  the  morning  and  took  bread,  and  a  waterskin,  put- 
"  ting  it  on  her  shoulder  and  the  child  ;  "  and  how 
"  God  heard  the  voice  of  the  lad,  and  the  angel  of 
"  God  called  to  Hagar  out  of  heaven."  2 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  this  acknowledged 
supremacy  of  Ezra's  personal  force  was  felt  to  the  ex- 
tremities of  the  nation,  and  awakened  a  new  sense  ol 
energy  wherever  it  extended  ;  but  it  is  fourteen  years 

1  Ezra  x.  44.  2  Genesis  xxi.  11,  14,  17. 


136  EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

before  we  again  catch  a  glimpse  of  its  penetrating  in- 
fluence, and  here  again  we  have  the  rare  fortune  of 
another  character  and  career  described  by  the  man 
himself. 

In  the  season  when  the  Court  of  Persia  was  at  its 
Nehemiah  wmter  residence  of  Susa  a  young  Jew  was  in 
b.  c.  445.  attendance  on  the  king  as  cup-bearer.  Ac- 
cording to  the  later  tradition,  it  was  as  he  was  walking 
outside  the  capital  that  he  saw  a  band1  of  wayworn 
travellers  entering  the  city  and  heard  them  speaking 
to  each  other  in  his  own  Hebrew  tongue.  On  finding 
that  they  were  from  Juda3a,  he  asked  them  for  tidings 
of  his  city  and  his  people.  They  told  him  of  the 
overthrow  of  the  walls,  of  the  aggressions  of  the  sur- 
rounding nations,  and  of  the  frequent  murders  in  the 
roads  round  Jerusalem.  He  burst  into  tears  at  the 
sad  tidings,  and  broke  forth  into  the  lamentation  famil- 
iar from  the  Psalms  :  "  How  long,  0  Lord,  wilt  Thou 
"  endure  Thy  people  to  suffer  ?  "  As  he  approached 
the  gate  a  messenger  came  to  announce  that  the  king 
was  already  at  table.  He  hurried  in  as  he  was,  with- 
out washing  from  his  face  the  signs  of  his  grief.  This 
arrested  the  attention  of  Artaxerxes,  and  led  to  the 
permission  to  return  to  his  native  country,  and  with 
power  to  rectify  the  disorders  which  had  so  distressed 
him.  So,  with  the  constant  tendency  of  later  times  to 
embellish  even  the  simplest  narrative,  was  conceived  in 
after  years  the  opening  scene  of  Nehemiah's  life.  His 
own  account  is  not  less 2  vivid,  though  perhaps  less 
dramatic.  It  was  not  a  band  of  strangers  but  his  own 
brother  who  had  been  engaged  in  a  pilgrimage,  which 
of  itself  indicates  the  patriotic  sentiment  of  the  family 
It  was  not  the  passionate  burst  of  a  momentary  sorrow 

»  Josophus   Ant.,  xi.  5,  G.  2  Nch.  i.  1,  2,  3. 


Lect.  xliv.  nehemiah.  137 

but  a  deep  and  brooding  anguish,  which  had  its  root  in 
the  thought x  that  his  ancestors  lay  buried  in  the  city 
thus  desolated  and  oppressed,  as  though  he  and  the 
ancestors  who  lay  in  those  dishonored  tombs  were 
themselves  responsible  for  these  calamities.  It  was  not 
a  few  hours,  but  four  long  months  during  which  he 
stood  aloof  from  the  royal  presence,  and  so  lost  the 
usual  cheerfulness  of  his  demeanor  as  to  provoke  the 
king's  kindly  question,  and  his  pathetic  answer:2 
"Then  the  King  said  unto  me,  For  what  dost  thou 
"  make  request  ?  So  I  prayed  to  the  God  of  heaven. 
"  And  I  said  unto  the  King,  If  it  please  the  King,  and 
"  if  thy  '  slave '  have  found  favor  in  thy  sight,  that 
"  thou  wouldest  send  me  unto  Juclah,  unto  the  city  of 
"  my  fathers'  sepulchres,  that  I  may  build  it." 

The   place   of   cupbearer,   according  to    the  minute 
etiquette  described  by  Xenophon,3  gave   such  B.  0. 445. 
means  of  access  to  the  king  and  queen,  that  bunding  of 
they  at  once  yielded  to  his  request,  and  he  set 
off,  with  escort  and  authority,  to  accomplish  the  desire 
so  near  his  heart.     It  has  been  conjectured  that  the 
recent   humiliation4   of    the   Persian   Empire    by   the 
Athenian  victory  of  Cnidus  may  have  rendered  it  part 
of  the  Persian  policy  to  fortify  a  post  so  important  as 
Jerusalem,  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Mediterranean  and  on 
the  way  to  Egypt.     At  any  rate,  the  one  idea  in  Nehe- 
miah's  mind  is  the  restoration  of  the  broken  circuit  of 
the  once  impregnable  walls  of  the  Holy  City.5     The 

1  Neh.  ii.  3,  5.  the  walls.     It  might  seem  natural  to 

2  Neh.  ii.  4,  5.  suppose  that  they  had  not  been  re- 
8  Xenophon,     Cyrop.,     i.     3,    4;     built   at   the   first  return.     But   the 

Ewald,  v.  148.  language  of  Nehemiah  (i.  2,  3)  im- 

4  Milman,  i.  435.  plies  something  more  recent.    Ewald 

6  It  is  difficult  to  decide  to  what  conjectures     the     distresses     which 

occasion  to  refer  the  desolation  of  clouded  the  last  years  of  Zerubbabel 
18 


138  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

change  to  this  conviction  from  the  confidence  of  Zech- 
ariah  in  the  unfortified  security  of  Jerusalem  is  as  re- 
markable as  was  the  change  under1  the  Monarchy 
from  the  confidence  of  Isaiah  to  the  despair  of  Jere- 
miah. It  was  now  felt  that  what  the  walls  of  Babylon 
on  a  gigantic  scale  had  been  to  the  Ckaldsean  Empire, 
that  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  were  to  the  little  Jewish 
settlement.  In  those  days,  rather  one  may  say  in 
those  countries,  of  disorder,  a  city  without  locked  gates 
and  lofty  walls  was  no  city  at  all.2  The  arrival  of 
Nehemiah  at  Jerusalem  with  his  "  firman,"  his  royal 
guard,  and  his  retinue  of  slaves,  was  regarded  as  a 
great  event  both  on  the  spot,  and  by  the  "  watchful 
"jealousy  "  of  the  surrounding  tribes.  He  lived,  we 
must  suppose,  in  the  fortress  or  palace  of  the  govern- 
ors overlooking  the  Temple  area,  and  then,  with  a 
splendid  magnanimity  unusual  in  Eastern  potentates, 
he  declined  the  official  salary,  and  the  ordinary  official 
exactions,  and  kept  open  house  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty3  guests  from  year  to  year,  with  a  profusion  of 
choice  dishes,  on  the  delicacy  of  which  even  the  muni- 
ficent Governor  seems  to  dwell  in  his  recollections  with 
a  complacent  relish.  But  this  and  every  other  step 
which  Nehemiah  took  was  subordinated  to  the  one 
design  which  possessed  his  mind.  It  was  the  third  day 
after  his  arrival  that  he  resolved,  without  indicating 
the  purpose  of  his  mission  to  any  human  being,  to  ex- 
Theex-  plore  for  himself  the  extent  of  the  ruin  which 
the  ruins,  was  to  be  repaired.  It  was  in  the  darkness  of 
the  night  that  he,  on  his  mule  or  ass,  accompanied  by 
a  few  followers  on  foot,  descended  into  the  ravine4  of 

From  the  action  of  the  hostile  party         2  Neh.  iv.  15. 
n  Syria.  8  Neh.  v.  14-18. 

1  See  Lecture  XL.  *  Neh.  ii.  13  (Heb.). 


Lect.  xliv.      the  rebuilding  of  the  walls.  139 

Hinnom,  and  threaded  his  way  in  and  out  amongst  the 
gigantic  masses  of  ruin  and  rubbish  through  that  mem- 
orable circuit,  familiar  now  to  every  traveller  like  the 
track  of  his  native  village.  Each  point  that  Nehemiah 
reaches  is  recorded  by  him  as  with  that  thrill  inspired 
by  the  sight  of  objects  long  expected,  and  afterwards 
long  remembered, — the  Spring  of  the  Dragon  (was1 
it  thai  already  the  legend  had  sprung  up  which  de- 
scribes the  intermi£tent  flow  of  the  Siloam  water,  as 
produced  by  the  opening  and  closing  of  the  dragon's 
mouth  ?)  j  the  gate  outside  of  which  lay  the  piles  of 
the  sweepings  and  off-scourings  of  the  streets;  the 
masses  of  fallen  masonry,  extending  as  it  would  seem 
all  along  the  western  and  northern  side  ;  the  blackened 
gaps  left  where  the  gates  had  been  destroyed  by  fire ; 
till  at  last  by  the  royal  reservoir  the  accumulations  be- 
came so  impassable  that  the  animal  on  which  he  rocle 
refused  to  proceed;  then  he  turned,  in  the  dead  of 
night,  along  the  deep  shade  of  the  Kedron  water- 
course,2 looking  up  at  the  eastern  wall,  less  ruinous 
than  the  rest,  and  so  back  once  more  by  the  gate  that 
opened  on  the  ravine  of  Hinnom.  And  now  having 
possessed  himself  with  the  full  idea  of  the  desolation, 
he  revealed  to  his  countrymen  the  whole  of 
his  plan,  and  portioned  out  the  work  amongst 
them.  It  was  like  the  rebuilding  of  the  wall  of  Athens 
after  the  invasion  of  Xerxes  —  like  the  building  of  the 
walls  of  Edinburgh  after  the  battle  of  Flodden.  Every 
class  of  society,  every  district  in  the  country,  took  part 
in  it.     Of  each  the  indefatigable  Governor  recorded  the 

1  Robinson,  B.  R.,  i.  507.  the  names  makes  any  detailed  topo- 

2  Neh.  iii.    15    (Heb.).     For   the      graphical    explanation    provokinglj 
tthole  ride  see   Robinson,  B.  R.,  i.     insecure. 

473.    But  the  difficulty  of  identifying 


140  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

name.-  He  told  for  after  times  how,  when  the  priests 
had  finished  their  portion,  they  at  once  consecrated  it, 
without  waiting  for  the  dedication  of  the  whole.1  He 
recorded  for  the  indignation  of  posterity  how  the  proud 
nobles  of  Tekoah 2  refused  to  work  with  the  humbler 
artisans.  He  arranged  how  this  or  that  quarter  should 
be  restored  by  those  whose  houses  were  close  by ;  so 
that  each  inhabitant  might  look  on  that  portion  of  the 
wall  as  his  own.  He  called  out  the  corporations3  of 
apothecaries,  goldsmiths,  and  merchants,  to  complete 
what  individuals  could  not  undertake.  He  noted  the 
various  landmarks  of  the  ancient  city,  now  long  since 
perished  and  their  sites  unknown,  but  full  of  interest 
to  him,  and  of  how  much  to  us !  as  relics  and  stand- 
ing monuments  of  the  old  capital  of  David.  The 
tower 4  of  Hananeel,  the  fragment  of  "  broad  wall," 
the  royal  garden  by  which  the  last  king  had  escaped,6 
the  stairs,  the  steps  (it  may  be  those  still  existing), 
hewn  out  of  the  rock  —  the  barracks  where  David's 
"  heroes "  had  been  quartered,  the  royal  tombs,  the 
ancient  armory,  the  traces  of  the  palace  and  prison, 
the  huge  tower  of  Ophel  —  all  these  stand  out  dis- 
tinctly in  Nehemiah's  survey  like  spectres  of  the  past, 
most  of  them  to  be  seen  and  heard  of  no  more  again 
for  ever.  It  was  a  severe  toil.  The  mere  removal  of 
the  rubbish  and  broken  fragments  was  almost  too 
hard 6  a  task  for  those  who  had  to  carry  it  off.  The 
hostile  neighbors,  who  were  determined  to  prevent 
this  new  capital  from  rising  amongst  them,  used  al- 
ternate threats  and  artifices.7     But  Nehemiah  was  proof 

1  Neh.  iii.  1.  6  See  Lecture  XL. 

2  Neh.  iv.  5.  °  Neh.  iv.  2,  10. 

»  Neh.  iii.  8,  31,  32.  7  Ewald  places  Psalm  lxxxiii.  at 

*  Neh.  iii.  1,  15,  16,  19,  25,  27.         this  period  (v.  155). 


Lect.  xliv.      the  rebuilding  of  the  walls.  141 

against  all.  High  above  Priest  or  Levite,  on  an  equal- 
ity with  the  other  resident  governors  of  Syria,  he  was 
the  successor  of  Zerubbabel  —  the  Tirshatha  or  Pasha 
of  the  Persian  Court.  To  the  enemies  without  he  had 
but  one  answer,  repeated  once,  twice,  thrice,  four  times, 
in  the  same  words  of  splendid  determination  : 1  "  I  am 
"  doing  a  great  work,  so  that  I  cannot  come  down : 
"  why  should  the  work  cease,  whilst  I  leave  it  and  come 
"down  to  you?"  To  the  traitors  and  false  prophets 
within,  who  advised  him  to  take  refuge  in  the  Temple 
from  expected  assassination,  he  replied  —  with  a  re- 
buke alike  to  the  fears  of  cowardice  and  the  hopes  of 
superstition  :  "  Should  such  a  man  as  I  flee  ?  and  who 
"  is  there,  that,  being  as  I  am,  would  go  into  the 
"Temple  to  save  his  life?2  I  will  not  go  in."  And 
with  this  same  magnanimous  spirit  in  the  more  critical 
moments  of  danger  he  animated  all  his  countrymen  : 
"  Be  not  ye  afraid  of  them :  remember  the  Lord  which 
"is  great  and  terrible,  and  fight  for  your  brethren, 
"your  sons,  and  your  daughters,- your  wives3  and  your 
"  houses." 

There  was  one  body  of  men  on  whom  he  could 
thoroughly  depend  —  the  slaves  who  had  accompanied 
him  from  Susa.  Half  of  these 4  worked  at  the  building, 
half  stood  behind  them,  guarding  the  shields,  bows,  and 
breast-plates  to  be  seized  at  a  moment's  notice.  The 
loyal  members  of  the  nobility  were  stationed  close  by, 
so  as  to  take  the  immediate  command.  Every  builder, 
too,  had  his  sworcl  fastened  to  his  sash.  By  the  side  of 
Nehemiah  himself  stood  a  trumpeter,  at  whose  blast  they 

1  Neh.  vi.  3.  8  Neh.  iv.  14.     It  is  curious  that 

2  Neh.  vi.  11.  Compare  Becket's  his  appeal  is  throughout  pro  focis, 
words,   ' '  I  will  not  turn  the  Cathe-     and  not  pro  arts. 

''dral  into  a  castle."  *  Neh.  iv.  16-23. 


142  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XL1V 

were  all  to  rally  round  him,  wherever  they  might  be. 
And  thus  they  labored  incessantly  from  the  first  dawn 1 
of  day  till  in  the  evening  sky,  when  the  sun 
had  set,  the  darkness  which  rendered  the  stars 
visible  compelled  them  to  desist.  And  when  night  fell, 
there  was  a  guard  kept  by  some,  whilst  those  who  had 
been  at  work  all  day  took  off  their  clothes  and  slept. 
Only  of  Nehemiah,  with  his  slaves  and  the  escort  which 
had  followed  him  from  Persia,  it  is  proudly  recorded 
that  not  one  took  off  even  the  least  article  of  his  dress.2 
So  he  emphatically  repeats,  as  if  the  remembrance  of 
those  long  unresting  vigils  had  been  engraven  on  his 
memory,  down  to  the  slightest  particular. 

Such  was  the  nobler  side  of  that  gallant  undertaking, 
in  which  were  fulfilled  the  passionate  longings  of  the 
exiles,  throughout  their  whole  stay  in  Babylon,  "  that 
"  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  should  be  built." 3 

Even  when  the  walls  were  completed  the  danger  was 
The  dedi-  not  entirely  over :  the  empty  spaces  of  the 
the  walls,  town  had 4  still  to  be  filled  from  the  nearest  vil- 
lages; the  gates  were  still  to  be  closed  till  the  sun 
was5  full}'  risen;  guards  were  still  to  be  kept.  But  Je- 
rusalem was  now  once  more  a  strong  fortress.  When 
the  great  military  historian  and  archasologist  of  the 
Jewish  nation  looked  at  the  defences  of  the  city  in  his 
own  time,  he  could  truly  say  that  "  though  Nehemiah 
"  lived  to  a  good  old  age,  and  performed  many  other 
"  noble  acts,  yet  the  eternal  monument  of  himself  which 
"  he  left  behind  him  was  the  circuit  of  the  walls  of  Je- 
'  rusalem."  6    The  day 7  on  which  this  was  accomplished 

1  Neh.  iv.  21  (Heb.).  6  Neh.  vii.  3. 

2  With  the  exception  indicated  in         6  Josephus,  Ant,  xi.  5,  8. 

.he    last   words    of    iv.  23.       (See         7  Neh.  vi.  15.    The  length  of  time 

Ewald,  v.  156.)  which    the   rebuilding    occupied    is 

8  See  Lecture  XLI.  somewhat  doubtful.     See  Ewald,  v. 

4  Neh.  vii.  4:  xi.  1,  2.  157. 


Lect.  XLIV.  MEETING  WITH  EZRA.  143 

was  celebrated  by  a  dedication,  as  if  of  a  sanctuary,  in 
which  two1  vast  processions  passed  round  the  walls, 
halting  at  one  or  other  of  those  venerable  landmarks 
which  signalized  the  various  stages  of  their  labor; 
whose  shadows  had  been  their  daily  and  nightly  com- 
panions for  such  weary  months  of  watching  and  working. 
The  Levites  came  up  from  their  country  districts,  with 
their  full  array  of  the  musical  instruments  which  still 
bore  the  name 2  of  their  royal  inventor ;  the  minstrels, 
too,  were 3  summoned  from  their  retreats  on  the  hills  of 
Judah  and  in  the  deep  valley  of  the  Jordan.  They  all 
met  in  the  Temple  Court.  The  blast  of  the  priestly 
trumpets  sounded  on  one  side,  the  songs  of  the  min- 
strels were  loud  in  proportion  on  the  other.  It  is  spe- 
cially mentioned  that  even  the  women  and  children 
joined  in  the  general  acclamation,  and  "the  joy  of 
"Jerusalem  was  heard  even  afar  off."  Perhaps  the 
circumstance  that  leaves  even  yet  a  deeper  impression 
than  this  tumultuous  triumph  is  the  meeting  which  on 
this  day,  and  this  day  alone,  Nehemiah  records  in  his 
own  person,  of  the  two  men  who  in  spirit  were  so  closely 
united  —  he  himself  as  heading  one  procession,  and 
"  Ezra  the  Scribe  "  as  heading  the  other.4 

Ezra,  it  would  seem,  had  taken  no  part  in  the  for- 
tification of  the  walls.  But  there  is  one  tradition5 
that  connects  him  with  the  internal  arrangements  of 
the  city.  He  was  believed  for  the  first  time  to  have 
carried  out  the  rule,  afterwards  so  rigidly  observed, 
of  extramural  interment.  All  the  bones  already 
buried  within   the    city  he  cleared    out,  leaving   only 

i  Neh.  xii.  27-43.  4  Neh.  xii.  36,  40. 

2  Ngij.  xii,  36.  5  Derenbourg,    Palestine,    p.     26. 

8  Neh.  xii.   28,  29.  See  Lecture     See  Lecture  XL. 
£LUI. 


144  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV 

two  exceptions,  the  tomb  of  the  Kings  and  the  tomb 
of  the  Prophetess  Huldah.1 

Once  before,  however,  if  we  may  trust  the  Chron- 
icler of  this  period,  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  had  been 
brought  together  —  on  the  occasion  of  the  Festival 
of  the  Tabernacles,  so  dear  to  the  Jewish2  nation, 
interwoven  with  the  recollections  of  the  dedication 
alike  of  the  first  and  of  the  second  Temple.  Then 
as  before,  when  the  startling  conflict  between 

B.  c.  445. 

their  present  condition  and  the  regulations  of 
the  ancient  law  was  brought  before  them,  they  broke 
Festival  of    out  into  passionate  tears.     But  this  was  not  to 

Taber- 

nacies.  be  allowed.8  The  darker  side  of  religion  had 
not  yet  settled  down  upon  the  nation.  The  joyous 
tone  of  David,  and  of  Isaiah,  which  Haggai  and  Zecha- 
riah  had  continued,  was  not  to  be  abandoned  even  in 
the  austere  days  of  the  two  severe  Reformers.4  Nehe- 
miah the  Tirshatha,  and  Ezra  the  Scribe  —  the  Ruler 
first,  and  the  Pastor  afterwards — joined  in  checking 
this  unseasonable  burst  of  penitence.  With  those 
stern  and  stout  hearts,  a  flood  of  tears  was  the  sign, 
not  of  reviving  strength,  but  of  misplaced  weakness. 
Feasting,  not  fasting,  was  the  mark  of  the  manly, 
exuberant  energy  which  the  national  crisis  required. 
"  This  day  is  holy.  Mourn  not,  nor  weep.  Go  your 
"  way ;  eat  the  fat,  and  drink  the  sweet,  and  send 
"  portions  unto  them  for  whom  nothing  is  prepared 
"...  neither  be  ye  sorry,  for  the  joy  of  the  Eternal 
"is  your  strength."  "Hold  your  peace;"  none  of 
these  fruitless  lamentations :  "for  the  day  is  holy : 
K  neither  be  ye  grieved." 

1  See  Lecture  XL.  8  Neh.  viii.  9-12.     See  this  admi- 

2  Neh     vii.    9-18.      See    Lecture     rably  described  by  Ewald,  v.  146. 
XUII.  *  Neh.  viii.  9. 


Lect.  xliv.  their  reforms.  145 

Such  was  the  Revival  of  Jerusalem ;  and  even  in 
details  it  was  found  to  be  borne  out  by  the  ancient  law. 
That  great  festival  of  the  Vintage,  which  had  been 
intended  to  commemorate  the  halt  in  the  Exodus 
made  within  the  borders  of  Egypt  —  the  Dionysia,1 
the  Saturnalia,  the  Christmas,  if  we  may  so  say,  of 
the  Jewish  Church  —  had  during  centuries  fallen  into 
almost  entire  neglect.  They  had  to  go  back  even  to 
the  days  of  Joshua  to  find  a  time  when  it  had  been 
rightly  observed.2  From  the  gardens  of  Mount  Olivet, 
they  cut  down  branches  from  the  olives,  the  palms, 
and  pines,  and  myrtles8  that  then  clothed  its  sides, 
and  on  the  flat  roofs,  and  open  grounds,  and  Temple 
courts,  and  squares  before  the  city  gates  wove  green 
arbors,  with  the  childlike  festivity  which  probably 
from  that  day  to  this  has  never  ceased  out  of  the 
Jewish  world  in  that  autumnal  season.  One  there  was 
who  partook  five  centuries  later  in  this  feast,  and 
whose  heart's  desire  was  to  prolong  the  joyous  feelings 
represented  by  it  into  systems  which  have  too  often 
repelled  or  ignored  them.4 

From  this  point  the  two  great  restorers  of  Jerusa- 
lem, who  hitherto  had  moved  in  spheres  apart  —  the 
aged  scribe,  absorbed  in  the  study  of  the  ancient  law ; 
the  young  layman,  half  warrior,  half  statesman,  ab- 
sorbed in  the  fortification  of  the  city  —  were  drawn 
closer  and  closer  together,  and  henceforth,  whether 
in  legend  or  history,  they  became  indistinguishably 
blended.  The  narrative  of  Nehemiah  himself  Reformsof 
does  not  again  mention  Ezra ;  but  it  is  devoted  Nehemiah- 
to  deeds  which,  whether  for  good  or  evil,  might  almost 
equally  belong  to  both.     It  is  not  the  last  time  that 

1  See  Lecture  XL VIII.  8  Nell.  viii.  16. 

2  Neh.  viii.  17.  4  John  vii.  2,  37. 

19 


146  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lel,t.  XLIV. 

the  architect  or  the  engineer  has  been  the  colleague 
of  the  reformer  or  theologian.  Vauban  saw  more,  felt 
more  keenly  the  true  needs  of  France  than  Fenelon 
or  Bossuet.1  So  Nehemiah  rebuked  the  nobles  for 
their  oppressions  and  usurious  exactions;2  he  sum- 
moned the  Levites  and  the  singers 3  to  their  appointed 
duties;  he  closed4  the  gates  against  the  merchants 
who  came  with  their  laden  asses  on  the  Sabbath  day. 
He  was  the  originator  of  the  treaty  or  compact  by 
which  the  whole  nation  bound  itself5  over  to  these 
observances.  It  was  on  a  day  of  solemn  abstinence 
(which,  instead  of  preceding,  as  in  later,  and,  perhaps, 
in  earlier,  times,  followed 6  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles) 
that  this  close  and  concentration  of  all  their  efforts 
was  accomplished.  Two  at  least  of  the  pledges  were 
fulfilled  —  the  Levitical  ritual  was  firmly  established  ; 
the  Sabbatical  rest,  both  of  the  day  and  of  the  year,7 
struck   deep    root.      And    two   lesser   institu- 

b.  c.  445.  .  x 

,  tions  also  sprang  from  this  time.  One  was  the 
contribution  of  wood  to  the  Temple.  So  vast  was  the 
consumption  of  timber  for  the  furnaces  in  which  the 
sacrificial  flesh  was  roasted,  or  burnt,  and  so  laborious 
was  the  process  of  hewing  down  the  distant  forest 
trees  and  bringing  them  into  Jerusalem,  that  it  was 
made  a  special  article  8  of  the  national  covenant,  and 
the  14th  of  the  month  Ab  (August)  was  observed  as 
the  Festival  of  the  Wood- Carriers.  It  was  the  se- 
curity that  the  sacred  fire  —  which,  according  to  the 
later  legend,  Nehemiah  had  lighted   by  preternatural 

1  Memoirs  of  St.  Simon,  c.  xviii.  7  1    Mace.  vi.  49,  53;  Joscphus, 

2  Neh.  v.  1-16.  Ant.,  xi.  8,  5;  xiii.  8,  1;  xiv.  10,  6; 
8  Neh.  xiii.  10-12.  xv.  1,  2. 

4  Neh.  xiii.  15-22.  8  Neh.  x.  35;  xiii.  31;  Joscphus, 

*  Neh.  x.  29-34.  B.  J.,  ii.  17,  6;  Ewald,  v.  1G6. 

«  Neh.  ix.  1. 


Lect.  XLIVT.     COLLISION  WITH  NEIGHBORING  TRIBES.  147 

means 1  —  should  always  have  a  supply  of  fuel  to  pre- 
serve it  from  the  slightest  chance  of  extinction.  An- 
other was  the  rate  levied  on  every  Jew  for  the  support 
of  the  Temple,  in  the  form  of  the  third  of  a  shekel, 
represented  in  the  Greek  coinage  by  two  drachmas, 
and  afterwards  remaining  as  the  sign2  of  Jewish  cit- 
izenship. 

Nehemiah's  collision  with  the  surrounding  tribes 
still  continued.  They  had  contested  inch  by  Collision 
inch  his  great  enterprise  of  making  Jerusalem  Tobiah, 
a  fortified  capital.  There  were  three  more  obstructive 
than  the  rest,  probably  the  three  native  princes  estab- 
lished by  the  Persian  satrap  over  the  three  surround- 
ing districts  of  Transjorclanic,  Southern,  and  Northern 
Palestine.  Tobiah  was  the  resident  at  Amnion,  and 
it  would  seem  that,  like  the  Hospodars  in  the  Danu- 
bian  Principalities,  he  had  reached  that  post  by  hav- 
ing been  a  slave  in  the  Imperial  court,  and  this  ante- 
cedent Nehemiah  does  not  allow  us  to  forget.  "  The 
"  Slave,2,  the  Ammonite,"  is  the  sarcastic  expression 
by  which  Nehemiah  more  than  once  insists  on  desig- 
nating him.  Tobiah  prided  himself  on  his  knowledge 
of  the  internal  state  of  Jerusalem.  He  it  was  who, 
when  his  colleagues  expressed  alarm  at  the  rebuilding 
of  the  walls,  took  upon  himself  to  treat  the  whole 
matter  as  a  jest :  "  For  if  a  jackal  were  to  crawl  up, 
"he  could  knock  them  down."  He  it  was  who  had 
constant  intrigues  with*  the  disaffected  party  within 
the  walls,  menacing  Nehemiah  by  means  of  the  puny 
representatives  of  the  ancient  prophets  who  still  were 

1  2  Mace.  i.  18.  half  a  shekel  when  it  was  found  nee- 

2  Neh.    x.    32;    Josephus,    Ant.,  essary  to  increase  the  payment, 
xviii.  9,  1;  Matt.  xvii.  24-27.    Kue-  8  Neh.  ii.  10-19      See  Ewald,  v. 
aen  (iii.  7)  conjectures  that  the  text  153. 

jf   Ex.  xxx.   11-16  was   altered   to 


148  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

to  be  found  there,  corresponding  with  the  nobles, 
with  whom  he  was  doubly  connected  by  his  own 
marriage  with  the  daughter  of  Shechaniah,  and  by 
his  son's  marriage  with  the  daughter  of  Meshullam,1 
and  even  after  the  completion  of  the  walls  he  still 
kept  on  his  friendly  relations  with  the  chief  priest 
Eliashib,  and  established  himself  in  one  of  the  great 
store-chambers  of  the  Temple,  until  Nehemiah  on  his 
return  from  Susa  indignantly  drove  him  out  with  all 
his  furniture. 

The  Arabian  prince,  who  had  apparently  established 
himself  in  the  Edomite  territory,  was  Gashmu 2 

Gashmu,  J  ' 

or  Geshem,  founder  probably  of  the  Nabathsean 
dynasty,  but  living  only  in  Nehemiah's  memory  as  th  • 
idle  chatterer  who  brought  false  charges  against  him  as 
endeavoring  to  establish  an  independent  sovereignty  at 
Jerusalem. 

But  the  most  powerful  of  this  triumvirate  was  San- 
and  San-  ballat,  whose  official  position  at  Samaria  gave 
baiiat.  kim  special  influence  with  the  Persian  garri- 
son3 which  was  quartered  there.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
he  was  a  native  of  Beth-boron,  which  would  agree  with 
his  establishment  on  the  western  side  of  the  Jordan,  or 
of  the  Moabite  Horonaim,  which  would  agree  with  his 
close  adhesion  to  the  Ammonite  Tobiah.  There  was  a 
peculiar4  vein  of  irritating  taunt,  for  which 
those  two  tribes  had  an  odious  reputation,  and 

1  Nch.  iv.  3;  vi.  12,  14,   17,   18;     Aral),  and  is  full  of  quaint   humor 
xiii.  4,  7.  and  wisdom. 

2  Nch.  vi.  G.      See  a  striking  ad-         8  Ezra  iv.  23;  Neh.  iv.  2. 

dress  of  Collier,  the  American  4  Zeph.  ii.  8;  Neh.  iv.  1;  vi.  13. 
Preacher,  on  the  words  "  Gashmu  The  same  word  is  used.  Sec  Mr. 
"saithit."  It  is  probahly  the  only  Grove's  instructive  article  on 
Bcrmon  ever   preached  on  this  wild     "  Moab  "  in  the  Diet,  of  the  Bible, 

ii.  p.  398. 


Lect.  XLIV.     COLLISION   WITH  NEIGHBORING  TKIBES.  149 

which  characterizes  all  the  communications  of  both 
those  chiefs.  Sanballat  also,  like  Tobiah,  was  allied 
with  the  High  Priest's  family.  There  waa  a  youth  of 
that  house,  Manasseh,  who  had  taken  for  his  wife  San- 
ballat's  daughter,  Nicaso.1  Like  Helen  of  Sparta,  like 
La  Cava  of  Spain,  like  Eva  of  Ireland,  her  name  was 
preserved  in  Jewish  tradition  as  the  source  of  the  long 
evils  which  flowed  from  that  disastrous  union.  It  was 
this  that  was  the  most  conspicuous  instance  of  those 
foreign  marriages  that  had  plunged  Ezra  into  the  silent 
abstraction  of  sorrow,  and  had  roused  the  more  fiery 
soul  of  Nehemiah  to  burning  frenzy.  He  entered  into 
personal  conflict  with  them  ;  he  struck  them,  he  seized 
them  by  the  hair  and  tore  it  from  their  heads.  He 
chased  away  Manasseh  with  a  fierce  imprecation  "  be- 
"  cause  he  had  defiled  the  priesthood  and  the  court  of 
"  the  priesthood  and  of  the  Levites."  With  this  burst 
of  wrath,  blended  with  the  proud  thanksgiving  that, 
after  all,  he  had  done  something  for  the  purification  of 
the  sacerdotal  tribe,  something  too  (there  is  a  grotesque 
familiarity  in  the  thought)  for  his  settlement  of  the 
troublesome  question  of  the  firewood,  Nehemiah  closes 
his  indignant  record. 

There  is  a  pathetic  cry,  again  and  again  repeated 
throughout  this  rare  autobiographical  sketch,  hardly 
found  elsewhere  in  the  Hebrew  records,  which  shows 
the  current  of  his  thoughts,  as  though  at  every  turn 
he  feared  that  those  self-denying,  self-forgetting  labors 
might  pass  away,  and  that  his  countrymen  of  the  future 
might  be  as  ungrateful  as  his  countrymen  of  the  present. 
"  Think  upon  me,  my  God,2  for  good,  according  to  all 

1  Neh.  xiii.  28;  Josephus  (Ant.,  the  whole  story  to  a  later  time 
l  .   7,  2),  who,    however,   transfers     Ewald,  v.  213,  214. 

2  Neh.  v.  19:  vi.  14;  xiii.  14-31. 


150  EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

"  that  I  have  done  for  this  people."  "  Remember  me, 
"  0  my  God,  concerning  this,  and  wipe  not  out  my  good 
"  deeds  that  I  have  done  for  the  House  of  my  God,  and 
"for  the  offices  thereof."  "  Remember  me,  0  my  God, 
"  concerning  this  also,  and  spare  me  according  to  the 
"  greatness  of  thy  mercy."  "  Remember  me,  0  my 
"  God,  for  good." 

That  prayer  for  posthumous  fame  in  great  measure 
was  fulfilled  in  regard  to  both  of  the  Reformers,  but 
more  remarkably  in  the  case  of  Ezra  than  of  Nehemiah. 
They  were  both  glorified  in  the  traditions  of  their  coun- 
try. At  first  Nehemiah,  as  might  be  expected  from  his 
more  commanding  position,  takes  the  first  place.  It  is 
he,  and  not  Ezra,  "  whose  renown  was  great,"  and  who 
is  the  one  hero  of  this  epoch,  in  the  catalogue  of  wor- 
thies *  drawn  up  by  the  son  of  Sirach.  It  is  Nehemiah, 
Traditions  and  not  Zerubbabel,  who  in  the  next 2  age  was 
miah;  believed  to  have  rebuilt  the  Temple,  recon- 
secrated the  altar,  and  found  in  the  deep3  pit,  where 
it  had  been  hidden,  the  sacred  fire.  It  is  Nehe- 
miah, and  not  Ezra,  who  figures  in  the  recollections  of 
the  same  time  as  the  collector  of  the  sacred  books.4 
But  then,  as  sometimes  happens  in  the  reversal  of  pop- 
ular verdicts,  by  which  the  obscure  of  one  generation  is 
advanced  to  the  forefront  of  another,  Ezra  came 

of  Ezra.  .  .  .  . 

out  into  a  prominence  which  placed  him  on  the 
highest  pinnacle  beside  the  heroes  of  the  older  time. 
He  and  not  Nehemiah  gave  his  name  to  the  sacred  book 
which    records  their  acts.     He  was  placed  on  a  level 


1  Ecclus.  xlix.  11-13.  dron  valleys,  has,  from  this  legend, 

2  2  Mace.  i.  22.  been  called  "  the  well  of  Nehemiah  " 
8  Since  the  tenth  century  the  ■well  (Robinson's  Researches,  i.  490). 

»f  "  En-rogel  "  or  of  "  Job,"  at  the  4  2  Mace.  ii.  13. 
■•onfluence  of  the  Ilinnom  and  Ke- 


Lect.  xliv.  their  subsequent  eame.  151 

with  the  first  and  the  greatest  of  the  Prophets,  Moses 
and  Elijah.  He  was  identified  with  the  last  of  the 
Prophets,  Malachi.  He  was  supposed  to  have1  been 
contemporary  with  the  Captivity,  to  have  despaired  of 
the  restoration,  and  then  after  a  hundred  years  risen 
again,  with  his  dead  ass,  to  witness  the  marvellous 
change.  This  is  the  only  record  of  him  in  the  Koran  — 
the  same  legend  as  the  awaking  of  the  Seven  Sleepers 
of  Ephesus,  but  with  the  additional  point  that  he  came 
to  life  again  after  all  those  years  for  a  special  purpose. 
It  is  this  which,  in  a  hardly  less  transparent  fiction,  sup- 
poses that  Ezra  by  a  divine  inspiration  of  memory  repro- 
duced the  whole  of  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament 
which  had  been  burnt  by  the  Chaldoeans.  This  was  the 
fixed  belief  of  Irenseus,  Tertullian,  Clement  of  Alexan- 
dria, and  Augustine,2  based  probably  on  the  legend  in 
the  Second  Book  of  Esdras,  which  tells  how  Ezra  as  he 
sate  under  an  oak  heard  a  voice  from  a  bush  over 
against  him,  warning  him  that  "  the  world  had  lost  his 
"  youth,  and  the  times  begun  to  wax  old,"  and  that  for 
the  weakness  of  these  latter  days  he  was  to  retire  into 
the  field  for  forty  days  with  five  men,  "  ready  to  write 
"swiftly;"  —  how  he  then  received  a  full  cup,  full  as 
it  were  "  of  water,  but  the  color  of  it  was  like  fire 3  .  .  . 
"  and  when  he  had  drunk  of  it,  his  heart  uttered  under- 
"  standing,  and  wisdom  grew  in  his  breast,  for  his  spirit 
"strengthened  his  memory  .  .  .  and  his  mouth  was 
"opened   and  shut  no  more,   and  for  forty  days  and 

1  2  Esdras  iii.  1,  29;  D'Herbelot,  of  the  Eastern  Church,  which,  ap- 
Bibliothequo,  iv.  539-543  (Ozair  Ben  plying  to  Ezra  the  story  of  Nehemiah 
Scherahia).  in   2  Mace.  i.  13,  represent  him  as 

2  See  the  quotations  at  length  in  having  acquired  the  gift  of  inspira- 
the  Bishop  of  Natal's  work  on  the  tion  by  swallowing  three  mouthfuls 
Moabite  Stone,  p.  314.  cf  the  dust  where  the  sacred  fire  was 

»  This  is  varied  in  the  traditions     hid  (D'Herbelot,  iv.  643). 


152  EZRA   AND  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV 

"  nights  he  dictated  without  stopping  till  204  1  book? 
"  were  written  down."  2 

This  story  thus  first  appearing  at  the  close  of  the 
second  century  of  the  Christian  era,  and  diluted  by 
later  divines  into  the  more  refined  representation  that 
Ezra  was  the  collector  or  editor  of  the  sacred  books  of 
the  Old  Testament  Scriptures,  has  no  historical  basis. 
Neither  of  its  wilder  nor  of  its  tamer  form  is  there  the 
slightest  vestige  in  the  authentic  words  of  himself  or  of 
Nehemiah,  nor  yet  in  the  later  Chronicler,  nor  yet  in 
the  Son  of  Sirach,  nor  in  the  Books  of  Maccabees,  nor 
in  Josephus,  nor  yet  in  the  first  Apocryphal  Book  of 
Esdras,  nor  yet  in  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament, 
where  his  name  is  never  mentioned.  Equally  fabulous 
is  the  Jewish  persuasion  that  he  invented  the  Masoretic 
interpretations,  and  received  the  oral  tradition  of  Mo- 
saic doctrine,  which  from  him  was  alleged  to  have  been 
handed  on  to  his  successors.3  The  absolute  silence  of 
the  contemporary  or  even  following  documents  excludes 
all  these*  suppositions. 

Yet  behind  all  this  cloud  of  fables  it  is  not  difficult, 
in  the  authentic  documents  of  the  time,  to  discover  the 
nucleus  of  fact  round  which  it  has  gathered,  or  to  render 
its  due  to  the  great  historic  name  which  represents,  if 
not  as  in  the  legends  of  his  people,  the  "  Son  of  God," 
at  least  the  Founder  of  a  new  order  of  events  and  in- 
stitutions, some  of  which  continued  to  the  close  of  the 
Jewish  history,  some  of  which  continue  still. 

Ezra  and  Nehemiah  (for  in  some  respects  they  are 
Ag  Re_  inseparable)  are  the  very  impersonations  of  that 
formers.  quality  which  Goethe  described  as  the  charac- 
teristic by  which  their  race  has  maintained  its  place  be- 

1  This   is  the   true  reading,  and         2  2  Esdras  xiv.  1-10,  23-44. 
eaves  24  for  the  Canonical  Books.  8  Ewald,  v.  169. 


Lect.  xliv.  their  reforms.  153 

fore  the  Judgment  seat  of  God  and  of  history  —  the 
impenetrable  toughness  and  persistency  which  consti- 
tute their  real  strength  as  the  Reformers  of  their  people. 
Reformers  in  the  noblest  sense  of  that  word  they  were 
not.  There  is  not,  as  in  the  first  or  second  Isaiah,  as 
in  Jeremiah  or  Ezekiel,  a  far-reaching  grasp  of  the  fut- 
ure, or  a  penetration  into  the  eternal  principles  of  the 
human  heart.  They  moved  within  a  narrow,  rigid 
sphere.  They  aimed  at  limited  objects.  They  were 
the  parents  of  the  various  divisions  which  henceforth 
divided  Palestine  into  parties  and  sects.  They  were  — 
by  the  same  paradox  according  to  which  it  is  truly  said 
that  the  Royalist  Prelates  of  the  English  Restoration 
originated  Nonconformity  —  the  parents  of  the  Samar- 
itan secession.1  They  inaugurated  in  their  covenants 
and  their  curses  that  fierce  exclusiveness  which  in  the 
later  years  burned  with  a  "  zeal  not  according  to  knowl- 
"  edge  "  in  the  hearts  of  those  wild  assassins  who  bound 
themselves  together  with  a  curse  not  to  eat  bread  or 
drink  water  till  they  had  slain  the  greatest  of  their 
countrymen,2  —  of  those  zealots  who  fought  with  des- 
perate tenacity  with  each  other  and  with  their  foes  in 
defence  of  the  walls  which  Nehemiah  had  raised.  But 
within  that  narrow  sphere  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  were  the 
models  of  good  Reformers.  They  set  before  themselves 
special  tasks  to  accomplish  and  special  evils  to  remedy, 
and  in  the  doing  of  this  they  allowed  no  secondary  or 
subsidiary  object  to  turn  them  aside.  They  asked  of 
their  countrymen 3  to  undertake  no  burdens,  no  sacri- 
fices, which  they  did  not  themselves  share.  They  filled 
-he  people  with  a  new  enthusiasm  because  they  made  it 

1  For  the  details  of  the  Samaritan         2  Acts  xxiii.  21. 
«ect,    see    Lecture    XXXIV.,    and        3  Neh.  v.  10. 
Jost.,  i.  44. 

20 


154  EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV 

clear  that  they  felt  it  themselves.  The  scene  of  Ezra 
sitting  awestruck  on  the  ground  at  the  thought  of  his 
country's  sins,  the  sound  of  the  trumpet  rallying  all  the 
various  workmen  and  warriors  at  the  wall  to  Nehe- 
miah's  side,  inspire  us  still  with  their  own  inspiration. 
When  we  read  of  the  passion,  almost  the  violence,  of 
Nehemiah  in  cleansing  the  Temple  and  clearing  its 
chambers,  we  see  the  spark,  although  the  sulphureous 
spark,  of  that  same  Divine  flame,  of  which,  when  One 
came  who  found  the  house  of  prayer  turned  into  a 
cavern  of  robbers,  it  was  said  "  the  zeal  of  Thine  House 
"  hath  even  consumed  me."1 

They  were  again  the  first  distinct  and  incontestable 
As  anti.  examples  of  that  antiquarian,  scholastic,  critical 
quanes.  treatment  of  the  ancient  history  and  literature 
of  the  country  which  succeeds  and  is  inferior  to  the 
periods  of  original  genius  and  inspiration,  but  is  itself 
an  indispensable  element  of  instruction.  Something 
of  the  kind  we  have  indicated 2  in  the  efforts  of  Baruch 
the  scribe  when  he  gathered  together  the  scattered 
leaves  of  Jeremiah's  prophecies,  or  of  the  earlier  com- 
piler, who  during  the  exile  collected  in  the  Books  of 
Kings  the  floating  fragments  of  the  earlier  history  and 
poetry  of  his  race.  But  now  we  actually  see  the  pro 
cess  before  our  eyes. 

Nehemiah,  when  he  came  to  Jerusalem,  not  con- 
tented with  the  rough  work  of  building  and  fighting, 
dived8  into  the  archives  of  the  former  generations  and 
thence  dug  out  and  carefully  preserved  the  Register  of 
the  names,  properties,  and  pedigrees  of  those  who  had 
returned  in  the  original  exile.  Some  other  antiquary 
or  topographer  must  in  other  days  have  done  the  like 

1  John  ii.  17.  8  Neh.  vii.  5-73;  xi.  3-3G. 

2  Lectures  XL.  and  XLI. 


Lect.  xliv.  as  antiquaries.  155 

for  that  which  we  have  called  elsewhere  the  Domesday 
Book  of  Canaan  in  the  Book  of  Joshua.  But  in  Ne- 
hemiah  we  first  meet  with  an  unquestionable  person 
whose  name  we  can  connect  with  that  science  whose 
title  owed  no  small  part  of  its  early  fame  to  the  Jewish 
history  which  was  so  designated  —  Josephus's  "  Archae- 
"  ology."  It  is  Nehemiah's  keen  sympathy  with  those 
antique  days  which  made  him  so  diligent  an  explorer  of 
the  ruined  walls  and  gates  and  towers  and  well-worn 
stairs,  and  of  those  legal  ancestral  documents  of  the 
city  of  his  fathers'  sepulchres.  And  not  only  so,  but  (if 
we  may  trust  the  first  tradition  on  the  subject  which 
can  be  traced,  and  which  contains  the  one  particle  of 
truth  in  the  legends  concerning  the  origin  of  the  Jewish 
canon)  it  was  Nehemiah1  who  first  undertook  in  the 
self-same  spirit  implied  in  the  authentic  notices  just 
cited  to  form  a  Library  of  the  books  of  the  past  times : 
namely,  of  "  the  Books  of  the  Kings,  and  Prophets, 
"  those  which  bore  the  name  of  David,  and  the  Royal 
"  Letters  concerning  sacred  offerings."  This  earliest 
tradition  respecting  the  agglomeration  of  the  sacred 
Hebrew  literature  certainly  indicates  that  it  was  in  Ne- 
hemiah's time  that  the  various  documents  of  the  past 
history  of  his  race  were  united  in  one  collection.  Then, 
probably,  was  the  time  when  the  Unknown  As  collec_ 
Prophet  of  the  Captivity  was  attached  to  the  ^rcsre°d£  the 
roll  of  the  elder  Isaiah,  and  the  earlier  Zecha-  books' 
riah  affixed  to  the  prophecies  of  his  later  namesake ; 2 
when  the  Books  of  Jasher  and  of  the  "  Wars  of  the 
"Lord"  finally  perished,  and  were  superseded  by  the 
existing  Books  "of  Samuel"  and  "of  the  Kings."  It 
is  evident  from  the  terms  of  the  description  that  "  Ne- 
-hemiah's Library"  was  not  coextensive  with  any  ex- 

1  2  Mace.  ii.  13.  2  Kuenen,  iii.  12. 


156  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV 

isting  volume.  It  was  not  a  formation  of  divine  oracles 
so  much  as  a  repository  of  whatever  materials  from 
whatever  source  might  be  useful  for  the  future  history 
of  his  people.  It  was  not  the  complete  canon  of  the 
"  Old  Testament "  which  was  then  formed,  for  some 
even  of  the  earlier  Books,  such  as  Ezekiel,  had  not  yet 
fully  established  their  right ;  and  many  books  or  parts 
of  books  now  contained  in  it  were  still  absent.  The  va- 
rious "  Books  of  Ezra,"  Malachi,  the  Chronicles,  Esther, 
the  Maccabean  Psalms,  the  Maccabean  Histories,  per- 
haps Ecclesiastes,  probably  Daniel,  were  still  to  come. 
Nor  was  it  based  on  the  modern  idea  of  a  strictly  sacred 
volume ;  for  one  of  its  chief  component  parts  consisted 
of  the  official  letters  of  the  Persian  kings,  which  have 
never  had  a  place  in  the  ecclesiastical  roll  of  the  con- 
secrated Scriptures.  It  was  the  natural,  the  laudable 
attempt  to  rescue  from  oblivion  such  portions  of  the 
Hebrew  literature  as,  with  perpetually  increasing  ad- 
ditions, might  illustrate  and  enforce1  the  one  central 
book  of  the  Pentateuch,  round  which  they  were  gath- 
ered. The  "  Prophets  "  were  still  outside,  occupying  a 
position  analogous  to  that  filled  in  the  early  Christian 
Canon  by  the  Deutero -canonical  writings  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  the  "  doubtful  "  writings  of  the  New 
Testament.2  These,  in  common  with  all  "  the  other 
books"  which  followed  them,  formed  a  class  by  them- 
selves, known  as  "the  Books,"3  "  the  Bible  "  (to  adopt 
the  modern  word),  outside  "  the  Holy  Book  "  or  "  Holy 
Bible,"  which  was  the  Law  itself. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  point  at  which  Nehemiah 

1  tiriavvTiyaytv.     2  Mace.  ii.  13.  references,  and  the  conclusions  there- 

2  So  the   oldest    Talmudic    state-     from,  I  owe  to  Dr.  Ginsburg.    Comp. 
nents     ("  Mishna     Megilla,"     iv.,     Dan.  ix.  2. 

''Jerusalem   Megilla,"    73,    Sepher         8  See  Lecture  XLVIII. 
.srael,  iii.,   Sopherim,    iii.).     These 


Lect.  xliv.         as  students  of  the  law.  157 

the  Governor  recedes  from  view  to  make  way  for  Ezra 
the  Scribe,  who  in  the  later  traditions,  alike  of  Jew. 
Arab,  and  early  Christian,  entirely  takes  his  place. 

There  is  an  almost  contemporary1  representation  of 
Ezra  which  at  once  places  before  us  his  true  As  inter. 
historical  position  in  this  aspect.  It  was  on  {he^ered 
the  occasion  of  that  great  celebration  of  the 
Feast  of  the  Tabernacles  which  has  been  before  men- 
tioned. The  whole  people  were  assembled  —  not  the 
men  only,  but  the  women  issuing  from  their  Eastern 
seclusion ;  not  the  old  only,  but  all  whose  dawning  in- 
telligence2 enabled  them  to  understand  at  all,  were 
gathered  on  one  of  the  usual  gathering-places  outside 
the  city  walls.  On  the  summit  of  the  slope  of  the  hill 
(as  the  Bema  rose  on  the  highest  tier  of  the  Athenian 
Pnyx)  was  raised  a  huge  wooden  tower  on  which  stood 
Ezra  with  a  band  of  disciples  round  him.  There,  on 
that  September  morning,  just  as  the  sun  was  rising 
above  Mount  Olivet,  he  unrolled  before  the  eyes  of  the 
expectant  multitude  the  huge  scroll  of  the  Law,  which 
he  had  doubtless  brought  with  him  from  Chaldsea.  At 
that  moment  the  whole  multitude  rose  from  the  crouch- 
ing postures  in  which  they  were  seated,  after  the  man- 
ner of  the  East,  over  the  whole  of  the  open  platform. 
They  stood  on  their  feet,  and  he  at  the  same  instant 
blessed  "  the  Eternal,  the  great  God."  Thousands  of 
hands  were  lifted  up  from  the  crowd,  in  the  attitude  of 
prayer,  with  the  loud  reverberated  cry  of  Amen  ;  and 
again  hands  and  heads  sank  down  and  the  whole  peo- 
ple lay  prostrate  on  the  rocky  ground.  It  was  then 
the  early  dawn.     From   that   hour   the    assembly  re- 

1  It    is   not  in   Nehemiah's   own     Chronicler  has   filled  up  the   inter- 
records,  but  in  that  by  which   the     stices.     Neh.  viii.  8 ;  ix.  38. 

2  Neh.  viii.  3. 


158  EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

mained  in  fixed  attention  till  the  midday  heat  dis- 
persed them.  The  instruction  was  carried  on  partly 
by  reading  the  sacred  book,  partly  by  explaining  it. 
Sometimes  it  was  Ezra  himself  who  poured  forth  a 
long  passionate  summary  of  their  history,  sometimes 
it  was  the  Levites  who  addressed  the  people  in 
prayer.1 

We  feel  that  in  this  scene  a  new  element  of  religion 
has  entered  on  the  stage.  The  Temple  has  retired  for 
the  moment  into  the  background.  There  is  something 
which  stirs  the  national  sentiment  yet  more  deeply,  and 
which  is  the  object  of  still  more  profound  veneration. 
It  is  "  the  Law."  However  we  explain  the  gradual 
growth  of  the  Pentateuch,  however  we  account  for  the 
ignorance  of  its  contents,  for  the  inattention  to  its  pre- 
cepts, this  is  the  first  distinct  introduction  of  the  Mosaic 
law  as  the  rule  of  the  Jewish  community.  That  lofty 
platform  on  which  Ezra  stood  might  be  fitly  called 
"  the  Seat  of  Moses." 2  It  is  from  this  time  that  the 
Jewish  nation  became  one  of  those  whom  Mohammed 
calls  "  the  people  of  a  book."  It  was  but  one  book 
amongst  the  many  which  Nehemiah  had  collected,  but 
it  was  the  kernel  round  which  the  others  grew  with  an 
ever-multiplying  increase.  The  Bible,  and  the  reading 
of  the  Bible  as  an  instrument,  of  instruction,  may  be 
said  to  have  been  begun  on  the  sunrise  of  that  day 
when  Ezra  unrolled  the  parchment  scroll  of  the  Law. 
It  was  a  new  thought  that  the  Divine  Will  could  be 
communicated  by  a  dead  literature  as  well  as  by  a  liv- 
ing voice.  In  the  impassioned  welcome  with  which 
this  thought  was  received  lay  the  germs  of  all  the  good 
and  evil  which  were  afterwards  to  be  developed  out  of 
it ;  on  the  one  side,  the  possibility  of  appeal  in  each 

1  Neh.  ix.  3,  4,  5  (LXX.).  2  Matt,  xxiii.  2. 


Lect.  xliv.  as  students  of  the  law.  159 

successive  age  to  the  primitive,  undying  document  that 
should  rectify  the  fluctuations  of  false  tradition  and 
fleeting  opinion  ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  temptation  to 
pay  to  the  letters  of  the  sacred  book  a  worship  as  idola- 
trous and  as  profoundly  opposed  to  its  spirit  as  once 
had  been  the  veneration  paid  to  the  sacred  trees  or  th<. 
sacred  stones  of  the  consecrated  groves  or  hills. 

But  we  have  said  that  the  book  which  was  thus  rev- 
erenced was  not  coextensive  even  with  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  as  they  are  now  received.  It  contained  no 
single  song  of  David,  no  single  proverb  of  Solomon,  no 
single  prophecy  of  Isaiah  or  Jeremiah.  It  was  "  the 
"  Law."  When  Manasseh,  in  his  passion  for 
his  Samaritan  wife,  fled  from  the  fury  of  Nehe- 
miah  to  the  height  of  Gerizim,  he  carried  with  him, 
either  actually  or  in  remembrance,  not  all  the  floating 
records  which  the  fierce  Governor  of  Jerusalem  in  his 
calmer  moods  was  gathering  here  and  there,  like  the 
Reliques  which  Percy  or  Scott  collected  from  the  holes 
and  corners  of  English  minstrelsy,  or  Livy  from  the 
halls  of  Roman  nobles.  It  was  the  five  books  of  Moses 
only,  with  that  of  Joshua  appended,  which  the  fugitive 
priest  had  heard  from  Ezra,  or  Ezra's  companions,  and 
which  alone  at  the  moment  of  his  departure  commanded 
the  attention  of  the  community  from  which  he  parted.1 

1  In  like  manner  the  retention  of  for  the  sacred  books  was  probably 
the  ancient  Hebrew  characters  by  originated  by  the  desire  to  have  an 
the  Samaritans  confirms  the  Tal-  additional  mark  of  distinction  from 
inuiic  tradition  that  the  introduction  the  Samaritans,  as  the  English  pro- 
of the  Chaldaic  characters  dates  nunciation  of  Latin  is  said  to  have 
from  the  time  of  Ezra.  The  He-  been  suggested  or  confirmed  by  the 
brew  characters  still  continued  to  be  wish  to  make  an  additional  test  to  de- 
used  on  coins,  like  Latin,  as  the  tect  the  Roman  conspiracies  against 
official  language  of  Europe  after  it  the  Protestant  sovereigns.  See  De- 
had  been  discontinued  in  literature,  renbourg,  p.  446. 
The  use  of  the  Chaldsean  characters 


160  EZRA  AND   NEHEMIAH.  Lect.  XLIV. 

We  trace  the  exact  point  which  the  popular  veneration 
had  reached  by  the  point  at  which  it  was  broken  off  in 
the  Samaritan  secession. 

It  is  not  without  importance  to  notice  the  ascendency 
of  this  one  particular  aspect  of  the  ancient  Jewish  liter- 
ature over  every  other,  and  to  observe  that  the  religion 
of  this  age  was  summed  up,  not  in  a  creed  or  a  hymn, 
but  in  the  Law  —  whether  on  its  brighter  or  its  darker 
side.  On  its  brighter  side  we  see  it  as  it  is  represented 
in  the  119th  Psalm,1  belonging,  in  all  probability,  to 
this  epoch.  In  every  possible  form  the  change  is  rung 
on  the  synonyms  for  this  great  idea.  Every  verse  ex- 
presses it,  —  Law,  Testimony,  Commandments,  Statutes. 
But  the  view  of  the  Psalmist  (cxix.  95)  is  the  most  en- 
during. The  Psalmist  never  lets  us  forget  for  a  moment 
what  is  the  object  of  his  devotion.  It  is  the  Biblical 
expression  of  the  unchanging  Law  of  Right,  through 
which,  as  it  has  been  said  by  one  of  later  times,  — 

Even  the  stars  are  kept  from  wrong, 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens  through  thee  are  fresh  and  strong. 

It  is  the  vindication  of  the  grandeur  of  that  side  of 
human  goodness  which  both  the  religious  and  the  cyn- 
ical world  have  often  condemned  as  commonplace  mo- 
rality, but  which  the  author  of  this  Jewish  Ode  to  Duty 
regards  as  the  highest  flight  both  of  piety  and  of  philos- 
ophy. "  The  119th  Psalm,"  says  a  nameless  writer  of 
our  time,  "  that  meditation  which  with  sweet  monotony 
u  strikes  ever  the  golden  string  deep  buried  in  the  hu- 
"  man  heart,  a  string  implying  by  its  strange  suscepti- 
"  bilities  the  reality  of  a  music  not  of  this  world,  yet 
"  harmonizing  all  worlds  in  one  !  There  is  no  poetry, 
u  there  is  little  rhythm,  there  is  no  intellectual  insight, 
u  there  is  no  comprehensive  philosophy,  in  the  gentle 
"life   that   yearns  and  pleads   through  those  undying 

1  See  Ewald,  v.  172. 


Lect.  xliv.  the  scribes.  161 

u  words.  But  there  is  not  one  verse  which  does  not 
"  tell  of  a  man  to  whom  the  Infinite  Power  was  a  living 
"Presence  and  a  constant  inspiration."1  Such  is  the 
form  under  which  the  Law  presented  itself  to  a  relig- 
ious mind  in  that  age  of  the  Jewish  Church,  and  which 
well  agrees  both  with  the  passionate  devotion  of  Ezra 
to  its  service,  and  the  attachment  to  it,  with  a  mingling 
of  tears  and  laughter,  which  made  it  the  main  lever  of 
his  revival  of  his  people.  It  is  strange  to  reflect  that 
this  grand  idea  had  become  so  perverted  and  narrowed 
as  time  rolled  on,  that  in  the  close  of  the  Jewish  Com- 
monwealth "  the  Law,"  instead  of  being  regarded  by 
the  highest  spirit  of  the  age  as  the  main  support  of 
goodness,  was  at  least  at  times  regarded  by  him  as  its 
worst  and  deadliest  enemy.2 

And  this  leads  us  to  the  attitude  in  which  Ezra  him- 
self stood  toward  the  Pentateuch.  He  was  a  The 
Jewish  priest ;  he  was  a  Persian  judge.  But  Scnbes- 
the  name  by  which  he  is  emphatically  called,  throwing 
all  else  into  the  shade,  is  "the  Scribe."  We  have  al- 
ready indicated  the  earlier  beginnings  of  the  office. 
But  in  Ezra  it  received  an  importance 3  altogether  un- 
precedented. In  him  the  title  came  to  mean  "  the  man 
"  of  the  Book."  Those  long  readings  and  expositions 
of  the  Law  called  into  existence  two  classes  of  men : 
one  inferior,  the  Interpreters  or  Targumists,  or  (which 
is  another  form  of  the  same  word),  Dragomans ;  the 
other  the  Scribes,  who  took  their  places  beside  the 
Elders  and  the  Priests,  at  times  as  the  most  powerful 
institution  of  the  community.  The  Interpreters  or 
Dragomans  resulted  from  the  necessity  of  rendering 


1  Mystery  of  Matter,  280. 

5,  0,  10;  v.  18;  1  Cor.  xv.  56.    See, 

2  Rom.  iii.  20,  28;  iv.  15: 

;  vii.  5; 

however,  Rom.  vii.  12;  1  Tim.  i.  8. 

\riii.  2,  3;  Gal.  ii.  16;  iii.  2, 

10;  iv. 

8  Derenbourg,   25. 

21 

162  EZRA.  Lbct.  XLIV. 

the  archaic  Hebrew  into  the  popular  Aramaic.  They 
were  regarded  for  the  most  part  as  mere  hirelings  — 
empty,  bombastic  characters,  without  the  slightest 
authority,  ragged,  half-clothed  mendicants,  who  could 
be  silenced  in  a  moment  by  their  superiors  in  the  as- 
sembly,1 compelled  to  speak  orally  lest  their  words 
should  by  chance  be  mistaken  for  those  of  the  Script- 
ure. The  Scribes  or  "  Lawyers,"  that  is,  the  learned 
in  the  Pentateuch,  were  far  different.  Here,  again,  as 
in  the  case  of  "  the  Law,"  we  find  ourselves  confronted 
with  an  element  which  contains  at  once  the  noblest 
and  the  basest  aspects  of  the  Jewish,  and,  we  must 
'add,  of  the  Christian  religion.  It  is  evident  that  in 
the  Scribes  rather  than  in  any  of  the  other  function- 
aries of  the  Jewish  Church,  is  the  nearest  original  of  the 
clergy  of  later  times.  In  the  ancient  Prophet,  going 
to  and  fro,  sometimes  naked,  sometimes  wrapt  in  his 
hairy  cloak,  chanting  his  wild  melodies,  or  dramatizing 
his  own  message,  always  strange  and  exceptional  — 
in  the  ancient  Priest,  deriving  his  sanctity  from  his 
clothes,  with  his  strong  arms  imbrued,  like  a  butcher's, 
in  the  blood  of  a  cow  or  a  sheep,  no  one  would  recog- 
nize the  religious 2  ministers  of  any  civilized  country 
for  the  last  eighteen  centuries.  But  in  the  Scribe, 
poring  over  the  sacred  volume,  or  reading  and  enforc- 
ing it  from  his  lofty  platform,  or  explaining  it  to  the 
small  knots  of  "those  that  had  understanding,"  and 
gathered  round  him  for  instruction,  there  is  an  unmis- 
takable likeness  to  the  religious  teachers  of  all  the  va- 
rious forms  which  have  arisen  out  of  the  Judaism  of 
Ezra  and  Nehemiah.  The  Rabbi  in  the  schools  of  Safed 
and  Tiberias,  expounding  or  preaching,  from  whatever 
tribe  he  may  have  sprung — the  Cadi  founding  his  ver- 

1  Deutsch's  Remains,  pp.  325,  326.  2  See  Lecture  XXXVI. 


Lect.  xliv.  the  scribes.  163 

diets  on  the  Koran  —  the  Imam  delivering  his  Friday 
Sermon  from  the  Midbar  or  instructing  his  little  circle 
of  hearers  on  the  floor  of  the  mosques  —  the  Christian 
clergy  through  all  their  different  branches  —  Doctors, 
Pastors,  Evangelists,  Catechists,  Eeaders,  Revivalists, 
studying,  preaching,  converting,  persuading  —  all  these 
in  these  their  most  spiritual  unctions,  have  their  root 
not  in  Aaron's  altar,  nor  even  in  Samuel's  choral 
school,  but  in  Ezra's  pulpit.1 

The  finer  elements  of  the  widely-ramifying  institu- 
tion thus  inaugurated  appear  at  its  outset.  It  was  the 
permanent  triumph  of  the  moral  over  the  purely 
mechanical  functions  of  worship.  The  Prophets  had 
effected  this  to  a  certain  extent ;  but  their  appearance 
was  so  fitful  —  their  gifts  so  irregular  —  that  they 
were  always,  so  to  speak,  outside  the  system,  rather 
than  a  part  of  it  —  Preaching  Friars,  Nonconformists, 
or,  at  the  most,  Occasional  Conformists  on  the  grandest 
scale.  But  from  the  time  of  Ezra  the  Scribes  never 
ceased.  The  intention  of  their  office,  as  first  realized 
in  him  and  his  companions,  was  the  earnest  endeavor 
to  reproduce,  to  study,  to  translate,  to  represent  in 
the  language  of  his  own  time,  the  oracles  of  sacred 
antiquity;  to  ascertain  the  meaning  of  dark  words, 
to  give  life  to  dead  forms,  to  enforce  forgotten  duties  ; 
to  stimulate  the  apathy  of  the  present  by  invoking 
the  loftier  spirit  of  the  past.  Such  was  the  ideal 
of  the  "  Minister  of  Religion  "  henceforth  ;  and  when 
the  Highest  Teacher  described  it  in  His  own  words,  He 
found  none  better  than  to  take  the  office  of  Ezra,  and 
say :  "  Every  Scribe  which  is  instructed 2  unto  the 
"  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  like  unto  an  householder 
"  which  bringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure  things  new 
and  old." 

1  Npp  Lenture  L.  2  Matt.  xiii.  52. 


164  EZRA.  Lect.  XLIV 

And  when  in  the  sixteenth  century  of  the  Christian 
Church  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  element  of  Re- 
ligion was  once  again  brought  to  the  front,  with  the 
appeal  to  its  original  documents  —  the  English  Martyr 
at  the  stake  could  find  no  fitter  words  to  express  the 
permanent  triumph  of  his  cause  than  those  which  in 
the  Apocryphal  Book  of  Esdras  are  spoken  in  refer- 
ence to  the  ideal  Scribe,  the  ideal  Reformer  of  Israel  : 
"  I  shall  light  a  candle  oi  understanding  in  thine 
"  heart,  which  shall  not  be  put  out."  1 

But  to  this  great  office  there  was  and  is  a  darker 
side.  There  was,  indeed,  nothing  of  itself  Priestly  in 
the  functions  of  the  Scribe ;  the  idea  of  their  office 
was  as  distinct,  almost  as  alien,  from  the  mechanical, 
bullock-slaying,  fumigating  ministrations  of  the  Priest- 
hood as  had  been  the  office  of  the  Prophets.  But, 
unlike  the  Prophets,  this  distinction  was  in  their  case 
often  more  of  form  than  of  spirit.  Ezra,  though  a 
Scribe  first  and  foremost,  was  yet  a  Priest ;  and  his 
chief  associates,  until  the  arrival  of  the  Governor, 
Neheiniah,  were  Levites.  The  Scribes  and  the  Priests 
hung  together ;  and  at  some  of  the  most  critical  mo- 
ments of  their  history  the  interests,  the  passions,  and 
the  prejudices  of  the  two  were  fatally  indissoluble. 
And  in  like  manner,  although  from  the  more  spirit- 
ual nature  of  the  religion  in  a  less  degree,  the  Pastors 
of  the  Christian  Church  have  again  and  again  been 
tempted  to  formalize  and  materialize  their  spiritual 
functions  by  associating  them  once  more  with  the  name 
and  the  substance  of  the  ancient  Jewish 2  or  Pagan 
Priesthood. 

And  yet  further,  the  peculiar  ministrations  of  the 

1  2  Esdras  xiv.  25.  Compare  -  See  Professor  Lightfoot  on  the 
Froude's  History  of  England,  vi.  387.     Pliilippians,  243-266. 


Lkct.  xliv.  the  scribes.  165 

Scribes  became  more  and  more  divorced  from  that 
homely  yet  elevated  aspect  imparted  to  his  office  by 
Ezra.  There  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  fable  which 
ascribed  to  him  the  formation  of  a  body  of  Scribes 
called  the  Great  Synagogue,1  by  which  the  Canon 
of  Scripture  was  arranged,  the  first  Liturgy  of  the 
Jewish  Church  composed,  and  of  which  the  succession 
continued  till  its  last  survivor  died  two  centuries 
afterward.  Some  such  circle  doubtless  may  have 
grown  up  round  the  first  great  Scribe  —  a  circle  of 
"  men  of  understanding,"  such  as  Johanan  and  Eliasib, 
who  are  described2  by  that  name  as  having  accom- 
panied him  from  Babylon  —  though  of  the  existence 
or  the  doings  of  any  such  regular  body  no  vestige 
appears  in  any  single  historical  or  authentic  work 
before  the  Christian  era.  But  there  is  one  traditional 
saying  ascribed  to  the  Great  Synagogue  which  must 
surely  have  come  clown  from  an  early  stage  in  the 
history  of  the  Scribes,  and  which  well  illustrates  the 
disease,  to  which,  as  to  a  parasitical  plant,  the  order 
itself,  and  all  the  branches  into  which  it  has  grown, 
has  been  subject.  It  resembles  in  form  the  famous 
medieval  motto  for  the  guidance  of  conventual  ambi- 
tion, although  it  is  more  serious  in  spirit :  "  Be  circum- 
"  spect  in  judging  —  make  many  disciples  —  make  a 
"  hedge  round  the  law."  3  Nothing  could  be  less  like 
the  impetuosity,  the  simplicity,  or  the  openness  of  Ezra 
than  any  of  these  three  precepts.     But  the  one  which 

1  All  that  can  be  said  on  this  sub-  out  of  the  list  in  Nehemiah.     Comp. 

"ect  is  -well  summed  up  by  Deren-  Herzfeld,  iii.  380-387. 

Mourg,   c.    3,    and   by    Ginsburg   in  2  "Mebinim."     Ezra  viii.  16. 

Kitto's  Cyclopaedia   ("Great   Syna-  3  Derenbourg,  34.    The  mediaeval 

"gogue"),  where  it  is  conjectured  saying  is,  "Parere  superiori,  legere 

hat  the  120  members  were  made  up  breviarium  taliter  qualiter,  et  sinere 

res  vadere  ut  vadunt." 


166  EZRA.  Lect.  XLIV. 

in  each  succeeding  generation  predominated  more  and 
more  was  the  last :  "  Make  a  hedge  about  the  Law." 
To  build  up  elaborate  explanations,  thorny  obstruc- 
tions, subtle  evasions,  enormous  developments,  was 
the  labor  of  the  later  Jewish  Scribes,  till  the  Penta- 
teuch was  buried  beneath  the  Mishna,  and  the  Mishna 
beneath  the  Gemara.  To  make  hedges  round  the 
Koran  has  been,  though  not  perhaps  in  equally  dis- 
proportionecl  manner,  the  aim  of  the  schools  of  El-Azar 
and  Cordova,  and  of  the  successive  Fetvahs  of  the 
Sheykhs-el-Islam.  To  erect  hedges  round  the  Gospel 
has  been  the  effort,  happily  not  continuous  or  uniform, 
but  of  large  and  dominant  sections  of  the  Scribes  of 
Christianity,  until  the  words  of  its  Founder  have  well- 
nigh  disappeared,  behind  the  successive  intrench- 
ments,  and  fences,  and  outposts,  and  counter-works, 
of  Councils,  and  Synods,  and  Popes,  and  anti-Popes, 
and  Sums  of  Theology  and  of  Saving  Doctrine,  of 
Confessions  of  Faith  and  Schemes  of  Salvation ;  and 
the  world  has  again  and  again  sighed  for  one  who 
would  once  more  speak  with  the  authority  of  self-evi- 
dencing Truth,  and  "not1  as  the  Scribes."  A  distin- 
guished Jewish  Rabbi  of  this  century,  in  a  striking 
and  pathetic  passage  on  this  crisis  in  the  history  of 
his  nation,  contrasts  the  prospect  of  the  course  which 
Ezekiel  and  Isaiah  had  indicated  with  that  which  was 
adopted  by  Ezra,  and  sums  up  his  reflections  with  the 
remark  that :  "  Had  the  spirit  been  preserved  instead 
"  of  the  letter,  the  substance  instead  of  the  form, 
"  then  Judaism  might  have  been  spared  the  necessity  of 
"  Christianity."2  But  we  in  like  manner  may  say  that, 
had  the  Scribes  of  the  Christian  Church  retained  more 
:)f  the  genius  of  the  Hebrew  Prophets,  Christianity  in 

1  Matt.  vii.  29.  2  Herzfeld,  ii.  32-36. 


Lect.  xliv.  the  synagogues.  167 

its  turn  would  have  been  spared  what  has  too  often 
been  a  return  to  Judaism,  and  it  was  in  the  perception 
of  the  superiority  of  the  Prophet  to  the  Scribe  that  its 
original  force  and  unique  excellence  have  consisted. 

One  further  germ  of  spiritual  life  may,  probably,  be 
traced  to  the  epoch  of  Ezra.  If  in  the  long  The  syna- 
unmarked  period  which  follows,  the  worship  of gD| 
the  Synagogue  silently  sprang  up  such  as  we  shall  see 
it  at  the  latest  stage  of  their  history,1  it  must  have 
originated  in  the  independent,  personal,  universal  study 
of  the  Law,  irrespective  of  Temple  or  Priest,  which 
Ezra  had  inaugurated.  The  great  innovation  of  Prayer2 
as  a  substitute  for  Sacrifice  thus  took  root  in  Jewish 
worship  ;  the  eighteen  prayers  which  are  still  recited  in 
Jewish  synagogues,3  and  of  which  some  at  least  are, 
both  by  ancient  tradition  and  modern  criticism,  as- 
cribed to  Ezra  and  his  companions,  are  the  first  ex- 
ample of  an  articulate  Liturgy.  On  the  one  hand,  the 
personal  devotion  of  the  Psalms  now  found  its  place  as 
the  expression  of  the  whole  community ;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  the  conviction  which  the  Prophets  enter- 
tained of  the  perpetual  existence  of  the  nation  pre- 
pared the  way  for  the  conviction  of  the  endless  life  of 
the  single  human  being.  "  In  a  word,  Judaism  was 
"  now  on  the  road  towards  the  adoption  of  the  hope  of 
"  personal  immortality."  4 

1  See  Lecture  L.  3  See  note  on  p.  168;  see  Kuenen, 

2  See  Lecture  XLL  Religion  of  Israel,  iii.  19. 

4  Kuenen,  iii.  30. 


NOTE  ON  PAGE  167. 


Of  the  "Eighteen  Benedictions,"  as  they  are  called,  the  1st,  2d,  and 
3rd,  the  17th,  and  18th  and  19th  (Prideaux,  i.  419-422)  are  believed  to 
date  from  Ezra.     They  are  as  follows  :  — 

1.  Blessed  be  Thou,  O  Lord,  our  God,  the  God  of  our  fathers,  the  Ged 
of  Abraham,  the  God  of  Isaac,  the  God  of  Jacob,  the  great  God,  power- 
ful and  tremendous,  the  high  God,  bountifully  dispensing  benefits,  the 
Creator  and  Possessor  of  the  Universe,  who  rememberest  the  good  deeds 
of  our  fathers,  and  in  Thy  love  sendest  a  Redeemer  to  those  who  are  de- 
scended from  them,  for  Thy  name's  sake,  O  King,  our  Helper,  our  Sav- 
iour, and  our  Sbield.  Blessed  art  Thou,  O  Lord,  who  art  the  Shield  of 
Abraham. 

2.  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  powerful  for  ever.  Thou  raisest  the  dead  to  life, 
and  art  mighty  to  save ;  Thou  sendest  down  the  dew,  stillest  the  winds, 
and  makest  the  rain  to  come  down  upon  the  earth,  and  sustainest  with  Thy 
beneficence  all  that  live  therein  ;  and  of  Thine  abundant  mercy  makest  the 
dead  again  to  live.  Thou  helpest  up  those  that  fall ;  Thou  curest  the  sick ; 
Thou  loosest  them  that  are  bound,  and  makest  good  Thy  Word  of  Truth  to 
those  that  sleep  in  the  dust. 

Who  is  to  be  compared  to  Thee,  O  Thou  Lord  of  might?  and  who  is 
like  unto  Thee,  O  our  King,  who  killest  and  makest  alive,  and  makest  sal- 
vation to  spring  up  as  the  herb  out  of  the  field  ?  Thou  art  faithful  to  make 
the  dead  to  rise  again  to  life.  Blessed  art  Thou,  O  Lord,  who  raisest  the 
dead  again  to  life. 

3.  Thou  art  holy,  and  Thy  name  is  holy,  and  Thy  Saints  do  praise  Thee 
every  day.  For  a  great  King  and  an  holy  art  Thou,  O  God.  Blessed  art 
Thou,  O  Lord  God  most  holy. 

17.  Be  Thou  well  pleased,  0  Lord  our  God,  with  Thy  people  Israel,  and 
have  regard  unto  their  prayers.  Restore  Thy  worship  to  the  inner  part  of 
Thy  house,  and  make  haste  with  favor  and  love  to  accept  of  the  burnt 
sacrifices  of  Israel  and  their  prayers  ;  and  let  the  worship  of  Israel  Thy 
people  be  continually  well  pleasing  unto  Thee.  Blessed  art  Thou,  O  Lord, 
who  rcstorest  thy  Divine  presence  to  Zion. 

18.  We  will  give  thanks  unto  Thee  with  praise.  For  Thou  art  the  Lord 
our  God,  the  God  of  our  fathers  for  ever  and  ever.  Thou  art  our  Bock,  and 
the  Rock  of  our  life,  the  Shield  of  our  salvation.  To  all  generations  will  wo 
give  thanks  unto  Thee  and  declare  Thy  praise  ;  because  of  our  life,  which 
'e  always  in  Thy  hands  ;  and  because  of  our  souls,  which  are  ever  depend- 


Lect.  xliv.  note.  169 

ing  upon  Thee  ;  and  because  of  Thy  signs,  which  are  every  day  with  us  ; 
and  because  of  Thy  wonders,  and  marvellous  loving-kindnesses,  which  are, 
morning  and  evening  and  night,  continually  before  us.  Thou  art  good,  for 
Thy  mercies  are  not  consumed  ;  Thou  art  merciful,  for  Thy  loving-kind- 
nesses fail  not.  For  ever  we  hope  in  Thee  ;  and  for  all  these  mercies  be 
Thy  name,  O  King,  blessed,  and  exalted  and  lifted  up  on  high  for  ever 
and  ever ;  and  let  all  that  live  give  thanks  unto  Thee.  And  let  them  in 
truth  and  sincerity  praise  Thy  name,  0  God  of  our  salvation  and  our  help. 
Blessed  art  Tho'u,  O  Lord,  whose  name  is  good,  and  whom  it  is  fitting 
always  to  give  thanks  unto. 

19.  Give  peace,  beneficence,  and  benediction,  grace,  benignity,  and 
mercy  unto  us,  and  to  Israel  Thy  people.  Bless  us,  O  our  Father,  even  all 
of  us  together  as  one  man.  With  the  light  of  Thy  countenance  hast  Thou 
given  unto  us,  O  Lord  our  God,  the  law  of  life,  and  love,  and  benignity, 
and  righteousness,  and  blessing,  and  mercy,  and  life,  and  peace.  And 
let  it  seem  good  in  Thine  eyes  to  bless  Thy  people  Israel  with  Thy  peace 
at  all  times  and  in  every  moment.  Blessed  art  Thou,  0  Lord,  who  blessed 
Thy  people  Israel  with  peace.     Amen. 


XLV. 

MALACHI 

(OR  THE   CLOSE   OF   THE  PERSIAN  PERIOD). 


B.  C.  480-400. 


AUTHORITIES. 


Malachi. 

Esther  (Hebrew  and  Greek). 
ius,  Ant.,  xi.  6,  7. 


MALACHL 


LECTURE   XLV. 

MALACHI. 

"The  age1  of  Ezra  —  the  last  pure  glow  of  the 
"  long  days  of  the  Old  Testament  seers  —  pro-  The  last 
"  duced  one  more  prophetic  work,  the  brief  Prophets. 
"  composition  of  Malachi.  With  its  clear  insight  into 
"  the  real  wants  of  the  time,  its  stern  reproof  even  of 
"  the  priests  themselves,  and  its  bold  exposition  of  the 
"  eternal  truths  and  the  certainty  of  a  last  judgment, 
"  this  book  closes  the  series  of  prophetic  writings  in 
"  a  manner  not  unworthy  of  such  lofty  predecessors. 
"  And,  indeed,  it  is  no  less  important  than  consistent  in 
"  itself  that  even  the  setting  sun  of  the  Old  Testament 
"  days  should  still  be  reflected  in  a  true  prophet,  and 
''  that  the  fair  days  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  should  in 
"him  be  glorified  more  nobly  still." 

Malachi  was  the  last  of  the  Prophets.  Such  prophets 
and  prophetesses  as  had  appeared  since  the  time  of 
Haggai  and  Zechariah 2  were  but  of  a  weak  and  inferior 
kind.  He  alone  represents  the  genuine  spirit  of  the 
ancient  oracular3  order  —  as  far  at  least  as  concerns 
the  purely  Hebrew  history  —  till  the  final  and  tran- 
scendent burst  of  Evangelical   and  Apostolical  proph- 

1  Ewald,  v.  176.  Dan.  iii.  38  (LXX.)  ;  Psalm  lxxiv 

2  Nehemiah  vi.  7,  12,  14.  9;  Ecclus.  xxxvi.  15. 
8  1  Mace.  iv.  46;  i<c.  27;  xiv.  41; 


174  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

ecy,  when  a  new  era  was  opened  on  the  world.  The 
approximate  time  of  the  work  can  be  fixed  by  its  al- 
lusions to  the  surrounding  circumstances,  which  are 
still  of  the  same  kind  as  those  which  form  the  scene  of 
the  operations  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah.  To  them  he 
must  have  stood  in  the  same  relation  as  Isaiah  to 
Hezekiah,  or  Haggai  to  Zerubbabel ;  and,  although 
there  is  no  probability  in  the  tradition  which  identifies 
him  with  Ezra,  it  is  true  that  he  represents  the  pro- 
phetic aspect  of  the  epoch  of  which  the  two  great 
Reformers  were  the  scholastic  and  secular  representa- 
tives. 

There  is  the  same  close  union  as  then  between  1  the 
office  of  Priest  and  Scribe.  There  is  the  same  demor- 
alization 2  of  the  Priesthood  as  then  in  the  questionable 
associations  of  the  house  of  the  Hiorh  Priest  Eliashib  — 

o 

the  Eli  of  those  later  days  —  the  gross  and  audacious 3 
plundering  of  Hophni  and  Phineas  repeated  on  the 
paltry  scale  of  meaner  and  more  niggardly  pilfering. 
There  are,  as  in  Ezra's  time,  the  faithless  husbands,  de- 
serting for  some  foreign  alliance  their  Jewish  wives, 
who  bathe  the  altar  with  their  tears.4  There  are  the 
wealthy5  nobles,  as  in  the  days  of  Nehemiah,  who  grind 
down  the  poor  by  their  exactions.  Against  all  these 
the  Prophet  raises  up  his  voice  in  the  true  spirit  of 
Amos  or  of  Joel.  There  is  also  the  passionate  denun- 
ciation of  Edom,6  which  runs  like  a  red  thread  through 
all  the  prophetic  strains  of  this  epoch,  from  Jeremiah 
and  Ezekiel  and  the  Second  Isaiah,  through  Obadiah 
and  the  Babylonian  Psalmist,  down  to  this  last  and 
fiercest   expression,  which  goes  so  far  as  to    enhance 

1  Mai.  ii.  7.  *  Mai.  ii.  10-14. 

8  lb.  i.  (3-12  ;  ii.  8,  9.  «  Mai.  iii.  5. 

8  See  Lecture  XVIII.  «  Mai.  i.  2,  3.     See  Lecture  XL 


Lbct.  xlv.  the  messenger.  175 

the  Divine  love  for  Jacob  by  contrasting  it  with  the 
Divine  hatred  for  Esau.  But  there  are  three  ideas 
peculiar,  if  not  in  substance  yet  in  form,  to  Malachi  — 
significantly  marking  the  point  from  which,  as  it  were, 
he  looks  over  the  silent  waste  of  years  that  is  to  fol- 
low him,  unbroken  by  any  distinct  prophetic  utterance, 
yet  still  responding  in  various  faint  echoes  to  the  voice 
of  this  last  of  the  long  succession  of  seers  that  had 
never  ceased  since  the  clays  of  Samuel. 

I.  We  speak  first  of  the  chief  idea  which  is  in- 
wrought into  the  very  structure  of  his  work  The  Mes. 
and  of  his  being.  The  expectation  of  an senger" 
Anointed  King  of  the  house  of  David  has  ceased. 
Since  the  death  of  Zerubbabel,  neither  in  Ezra,  nor 
Nehemiah,  nor  Malachi,  nor  in  any  contemporary  books, 
is  there  any  trace  of  such  a  hope.  It  is  another  form 
in  which  the  vision  of  the  future  shaped  itself,  and 
which  was  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the  time.  The 
prominent  figure  is  now  that  of  the  Messenger,  the 
avant  courier  —  to  use  the  Greek  word,  "the  Ano-el" 
—  to  use  the  Hebrew  word,  the  Malachi,  of  the  Eter- 
nal. Such  a  figure  had,  doubtless,  been  used  before. 
In  the  Patriarchal  age,  and  at  times  in  the  Monarchy, 
there  had  been  heavenly  Messengers  who  brought  the 
Divine  Word  to  the  listening  nation.  Once  by  the 
Great  Prophet  of  the  Captivity  Israel  himself  is  termed 
the  Angel  or  the  Messenger.1  In  Haggai2  after  the 
Return  that  idea  had  been  still  further  localized.  He 
was  himself  "  the  Angel  of  the  Eternal."  In  Zechariah 
the  same  expression  (was  it  the  aged  Haggai  of  whom 
he 3  spoke,  or  the  unseen  Presence  which  Haggai  rep- 
resented ?)    describes   the   mysterious   guide    that   led 

1  Isa.  xlii.  19.  »  Zecli.  i.  11,  12;  iii.  1;  iv.  1. 

a  Hawaii.  13. 


176  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

him  through  the  myrtle-groves  and  through  the  court 
of  the  High  Priest's  trial.  But  now  the  word  pervades 
the  whole  prophetic  Book.  The  very  name  of  the 
Prophet  is  taken  from  it ;  whether  he  bore  the  title  of 
Malachi  as  indicating  the  idea  with  which  the  age  was 
full,  or  whether  it  was  transferred  to  a  Prophet  without 
a  name,  as,  possibly,  Abdadonai,  "  the  servant  of  the 
"  Lord,"  may  have  been  given  to  the  Great  Unnamed 
of  the  Captivity,1  from  the  subject  of  his  prophecy. 
The  ideal  Priest  whom  Malachi  describes  is  in  like 
manner  the  Messenger  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts.2  The 
eventful  consummation  to  which  he  looks  is  the  arrival, 
not  of  the  Warrior-king  or  the  Invisible  Majesty  of 
Heaven,  but  of  the  Messenger  who  should  enforce8 
the  treaty  which  had  been  made  of  old  time  between 
God  and  His  people,  which  had  of  late  been  renewed 
by  Nehemiah.  This  was  to  be  the  moment  of  the 
unexpected4  sifting  and  dividing  of  the  essential  from 
the  unessential,  the  worthless  from  the  valuable.  It 
was  to  be  like  the  furnace  in  which  the  precious  metals 
were  cleansed ;  it  was  to  be  like  the  tank  in  which  the 
fullers  beat  and  washed  out  the  clothes  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  Jerusalem ;  it  was  to  be  like  the  glorious  yet 
terrible  uprising  of  the  Eastern  sun5  which  should 
wither  to  the  very  roots  the  insolence  and  the  injustice 
of  mankind  ;  but,  as  its  rays,  extended  like  the  wings 
of  the  Egyptian  Sun-god,  should  by  its  healing  and  in- 
vigorating influences  call  forth  the  good  from  their  ob- 
scurity, prancing  and  bounding  like  the  young  cattle  in 
the  burst  of  spring,  and  treading  down  under  their  feet 

1  See    Clem.    Alex.,    Strom.,  i.  2.         *  Ibid.  iii.  2,  3. 

See  Lecture  XLI.     Mai.  i.  1.  <*  Mai.  iv.  2,  3  (Heb.).     See  Leo- 

2  Mai.  ii.  7.  ture  IV..  100. 
8  Ibid.  iii.  1. 


Lect.  xlv.  the  messenger.  177 

the  dust  and  ashes  to  which  the  same  bright  sun  had 
burnt  up  the  tangled  thicket  of  iniquitous  dealing. 
Yet  for  this  day  of  mingled  splendor  and  gloom,  a 
Prelude,  a  Preparation  was  needed  ;  and,  in  forecasting 
the  forms  which  it  would  take,  two  colossal  figures 
rose  out  of  the  past.  One  was  Moses,1  to  whom  on 
Horeb  had  been  given  the  Law,  which  now  through 
Ezra  had  been  just  revived,  expounded,  and  brought 
within  their  reach.  The  Pentateuch  was  to  live  in 
their  remembrance.  The  memory  of  their  past  his- 
tory, the  fulfilment  of  those  ruling  principles  of  "  con- 
"  duct  which  are  three  fourths  of  human  life,"  was 
their  guide  for  the  perilous  future.  And  for  the  en- 
forcement of  these  there  was  needed  yet  another  spirit 
of  the  mighty  dead.  It  was  the  great1  representative 
of  the  whole  Prophetic  order,  now  as  it  were,  by  the 
last  of  his  race,  evoked  from  the  invisible  world.  Al- 
ready there  had  sprung  up  round  the  mysterious  figure 
of  Elijah  that  belief  which  reached  its  highest  pitch  in 
the  Mussulman  world,  where  he  is  "  the  Immortal 
"  one,"  who  in  the  greenness  of  perpetual  youth  is  al- 
ways appearing  to  set  right  the  wrong  —  and  which  in 
the  Jewish  nation  has  expected  him  to  revive  in  each 
new  crisis 2  of  their  'fate,  and  to  solve  all  the  riddles  of 
their  destiny.  But  for  Malachi  the  chief  mission  of  the 
returning  Elijah  was  to  be  that  of  the  Forerunner  of 
the  final  crisis ;  who  should  arrest 3  in  their  diverging 
courses  the  hearts  both  of  the  older  and  the  younger 
generation,  and  who  should  enable  (if  we  thus  far  ven- 
ture to  unfold  the  thought  which  is  not  expressed  in 

1  Mai.  iv.  5.  version,  and   in   the  Greek  fifrdvoia. 

2  See  Lecture  XXX.  The  idea  is  of  a  wrench  of  the  mind 
8  Mai.  iii.  6.     It  is  the  figure  irn-     in    another  than  its  ordinary  direc- 

plied  in  the  word  "  turn  "  which  is     tion. 
perpetuated  in  the  Latin  phrase  con- 


178  MALACHl.  Lect.  XLV. 

the  Prophecy,  but  lies  deep  in  the  history  of  that,  as  of 
all  like  ages)  the  fathers  to  recognize  the  new  needs 
and  the  new  powers  of  the  children,  and  the  children 
to  recognize  the  value  of  the  institutions  and  traditions 
which  they  inherit  from  the  fathers. 

Such  an  insistence  on  the  necessity  of  patient  prepa- 
ration —  on  the  importance  of  working  out  the  old  and 
homely  truths  of  justice  and  truthfulness,  as  the  best 
means  of  meeting  the  coming  conflict  —  received  its  full 
point  and  meaning  when  such  a  rough  Precursor  —  such 
an  Angel x  of  moral  reformation  —  did  arise  and  recall, 
even  in  outward  garb  and  form,  the  ancient  Tishbite 
who  had  last  been  seen  in  the  same  valley  of  the  Jordan. 
But  the  principle  of  the  necessity  of  a  Messenger  or 
Angel  in  the  place  or  in  the  anticipation  of  that  which 
is  still  to  come  —  of  the  opening  of  the  way  by  the 
Great  for  the  Greatest — of  the  announcement  of  pure 
morality,  which  commends  itself  to  the  many,  leading 
toward  the  spiritual  religion,  which  commends  itself 
chiefly  to  the  few —  this  is  the  main  idea  of  Mala- 
chi's  teaching,  which  shall  now  be  expanded  and  ex- 
plained by  the  corresponding  events  and  ideas  of  his 
time. 

1.  It  branches  into  two  parts.  The  sense  of  the 
Divin°efthe  nee(^  °^  ^s  intermediary  dispensation,  if  it  is 
Name.  not  directly  connected,  at  any  rate  coincides, 
with  the  awe  which  shrinks  from  familiar  contact  with 
the  Divine  name  and  Presence,  with  the  reverence 
which  fears,  the  irreverence  which  avoids,  the  mention 
of  the  Supreme  Unseen  Cause.    In  the  book  which  prob- 

1  Mark  i.  2.     So  completely  in  the  John    the   Baptist,   in   reference   to 

Eastern  Church — probably  from  the  this  passage,  is,  in  the  traditionary 

zons'ant   use   of    the   word    &yyt\os  Greek  pictures  (as  at  Mount  Athos) 

both  for  angel  and  messenger — have  represented  as  a  winged  angel. 
the  two   ideas  been  combined,  that 


Lect.  XLV.  THE   DIVINE  NAME.  179 

ably  approaches  most  nearly  to  the  time  of  Malachi  the 
change  is  complete.  In1  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes  there 
is  no  name  but  Elohim  —  "God"  —  and  the  whole 
book  is  penetrated  with  a  reserve  and  self-control  ex- 
pressed in  words  which  have  a  significant  import  when 
within  sound  of  the  multitude  of  theological  phrases  and 
devotional  iteration  by  which,  both  in  East  and  West, 
the  religious  world  often  has  sought  to  approach  its 
Maker  :  "  God  is  in  Heaven  and  thou  upon  earth,  there- 
"  fore  let  thy  words  be  few."  2  And  it  is  summed  up  in 
the  brief  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter,  after  contem- 
plating the  many  proverbs,  the  words  of  the  wise,  the 
endless  making  of  many  books,  which  had  already  be- 
gun to  characterize  the  nation :  "  Fear  God  and  keep  His 
"  commandments,  for  this  is  the  whole  duty  of  man." 
We  have  seen  how  in  earlier  times  the  name  first 
of  "  Jehovah," 3  and  then  of  "  Jehovah  Sabaoth."  be- 
came the  national  name  of  the  Divine  Ruler  of  Israel. 
We  have  now  arrived  at  the  moment  when  this  great 
title  is  to  disappear.  In  the  parallel  passages  of  du- 
plicate poetry  or  duplicate  history  the  simpler  "  Elo- 
"him"  began  to  take  the  place  of  the  more4  sacred 
"Jehovah." 

In  accordance  with  these  isolated  indications  was  the 
general  practice,  of  which  we  cannot  ascertain  the  ex- 
act beginning,  by  which  the  special  name  of  the  God  of 
Israel  was  now  withdrawn,  and,  as  far  as  the  Hebrew 

1  For  the  date  of  Ecclesiastes  see  Sam.  v.  24,  25  ;  1  Chron.  xiv.  15,  16; 

Ginsburg's  Koheleth,  244-255.  2  Sam.  vi.  5,  9,  11;  1  Chron.  xiii.  8, 

'  Eccles.  v.  2.  12,    14;    2    Sam.    xxiv.    10,    17;    1 

*  Lectures  V.  and  XXIII.  Chron.  xxi.  7,  8;  Psalm  xiv.  2,  4,  7; 

4  Compare,  for  this  gradual  intro-  liii.  2,  5,  7.     I  owe  these  references 

Suction  of  "  Elohim  "  ("  God  ")  in  and  the  inference  from  them  to  Dr. 

the    later    books     for    "Jehovah"  Ginsburg. 
("The   Lord")    in    the   earlier,    2 


180  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV 

race  was  concerned,  for  ever  withdrawn,  from  the  speech 
Adoption  and  even  the  writings  of  the  nation.  Already1 
fajoZ?  at  the  time  of  the  Samaritan  secession  in  the 
mh'  days  of  Nehemiah  the  change  began  to  operate. 

In  their  usages,  instead  of  the  word  "  Jehovah  " 2  was 
substituted  "  Shemeh, "  "the  Name;"  but  they  still 
had  retained  the  word  unaltered  in  their  own  copies  of 
the  Law.  But  amongst  the  Jews  of  Jerusalem  the 
word  " Adonai,"  "Lord  or  Master"3  —  the  same  word 
that  appears  for  the  Phoenician  deity  whom  the  Syrian 
maidens  mourned  on  Lebanon  —  took  the  place,  not 
only  in  conversation,  but  throughout  the  sacred  writ- 
ings, of  the  ancient  name  ;  by  the  time  that  the  Greek 
translators  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  undertook  their 
task,  they  found  that  this  conventional  phrase  had  be- 
come completely  established,  and  therefore,  whenever 
the  word  Jehovah  occurs  in  the  Hebrew,  misrendered 
it,  Kvptog ,  "  Master  ;  "  and  the  Latin  translators,  follow- 
ing the  Greek,  misrendered  it  again,  with  their  eyes 
open,  Dominus;  and  the  Protestant  versions,  with  the 
single  and  honorable  exception  of  the  French,  misren- 
dered it  yet  again,  "  Lord."  And  thus  it  has  come  to 
pass  that  the  most  expressive  title  of  the  Eternal  and 
Self-existent,  which  in  the  time  of  Moses  and  Samuel, 
of  Elijah  and  Isaiah,4  it  would  have  been  deemed  a  sin 
to  keep  silent,  it  became  in  these  later  ages  a  sin  to 
pronounce.  Oh  the  misconstruction  which  had  been 
thus  dictated  by  superfluous  reverence  were  engrafted 
all  manner  of  fancies  and  exaggerations.     Arguments, 

1  See  Lecture  XLIV.  612)  regards  Adonis  as  the  name  of 

2  The  name  Jehovah  in  the  Moah-  the  God  of  the  Jews,  and  makes  it 
'hi  Stone  shows  that  il  must  have  one  of  the  reasons  for  identifying 
oeen  in  use  down  to  the  eighth  cen-  him  with  Bacchus. 

►ury  i'..  c.  (Dr.  Ginsburg.)  4  Nicolas,  Doctrines  religieuses  da 

8  Thus  Plutarch  (Qucest.  Conv.,  v.     Juifs,  165,  166. 


Lect.  XLV.  THE   DIVINE   NAME.  181 

solid  in  themselves,  even  in  the  New  Testament,  are 
based  on  this  manifestly  erroneous  version.  The  most 
extravagant  superstitions  were  attached  to  this  rejection 
of  the  sacred  phrase  as  confidently  as  in  earlier  times 
they  would  have  been  attached  to  its  assertion.  The 
Greek  translators  even  went  the  length  of  altering  or 
retaining  the  alteration  of  a  text  in  Leviticus,  which 
condemns  to  death  any  one  who  blasphemed  the  name 
of  Jehovah,  into  the  condemnation  of  any  one  who  pro- 
nounces it.1  The  name  itself  lingered  only  in  the 
mouth  of  the  High  Priest,  who  uttered  it  only  on  the 
ten  occasions  which  required  it,  on  the  day  of  Atone- 
ment ;  and  after  the  time  of  Simon  the  Just  even  this 
was  in  a  whisper.2  If  any  one  else  gained  possession  of 
it,  it  was  as  a  talisman  by  whicli,  if  he  was  bold  enough 
to  utter  its  mysterious  sound,  miracles  could  be  worked, 
and  magical  arts  exercised.  "  The  Ineffable  Name," 
the  "  Tetragrammaton,"  became  a  charm  analogous  to 
those  secret,  sacred  names  on  which  the  heathen  writers 
had  already  prided  themselves. 

Such  were  the  strange  results  of  a  sentiment  in  its 
origin  springing  from  that  natural,  we  may  almost  say, 
philosophical  caution,  which  shrinks  abashed  before  the 
inscrutable  mystery  of  the  Great  Cause  of  all.  When 
in  our  later  days  any  have  been  scandalized  by  the  re- 
serve of  sceptical  inquirers,  or  by  the  adoption  of  other 
forms  and  phrases  than  those  in  common  use,  for  the 
Supreme  Goodness  and  Wisdom  in  whose  power  we 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being,  they  may  be  com- 
forted by  the  reflection  that  such  reticence  or  such  de- 
viations are  borne  out  by  that  silent  revolution  which 
affected  the  whole  theology  of  the  Jewish  Church  from 

1  Ewald,   v.    198,    WO.     Nicolas,         2  Edersheim's  Temple,  270. 
166-170. 


182  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

the  period  of  the  book  of  Malachi  downward,  and  which 
has  left  its  mark  on  almost  every  translation  of  the  Bible 
throughout  the  world. 

If,  then,  this  earthly  mind 
Speechless  remain  or  speechless  e'en  depart, 

Nor  seek  to  see  —  for  what  of  earthly  kind 
Can  see  Thee  as  Thou  art  ? 

If  well  assur'd  't  is  put  profanely  bold 
In  thought's  abstractest  forms  to  seem  to  see, 

It  does  not  dare  the  dread  communion  hold 
In  ways  unworthy  Thee, 

O,  not  unowned,  Thou  shalt  unnam'd  forgive.1 

2.  In  itself  this  awe  expressed  the  well-known  diffi- 
culty of  defining  the  Immeasurable,  or  of  exploring 
the  primal  origin  of  existence.  Some  of  the  forms 
of  belief  to  which  it  gave  rise  will  appear  more  clearly 
as  we  proceed.  But  at  the  moment  of  which  we  are 
now  speaking  it  took  the  shape,  or  fostered  the  growth, 
of  a  doctrine  which,  though  never  altogether  absent 
from  the  Jewish  mind,  now  leaped  into  unusual  prom- 
inence. It  has  been  already 2  indicated  in  the  book 
of  Malachi ;  the  necessity,  the  craving  for  "  messen- 
"  gers,"  intermediate  spirits,  earthly  or  celestial,  to 
break,  as  it  were,  the  chasm  between  the  Infinite  and 
the  finite.  "Who  may  abide  the  day  of  His  coming?" 
The  same  tendency  which  in  our  nineteenth  century 
clothes  itself  in  the  phraseology  of  u  Nature,"  "  the 
"  Reign  of  Law,"  "  the  forces  of  Nature,"  caused  the 
Oriental  mind  of  the  fourth  century  before  our  era 
to  adopt  the  nomenclature  of  a  hierarchy  of  unknown 
mnistering  spirits,  who  as  "Messengers"  or  "watchers  " 
guarded  the  fortunes  of  nations  and  individuals  and 
directed  the  movements  of  the  universe. 

In  the  Greek  version  of  the  earlier  books  this  belief 

1  Clough's  Poems,  ii.  87.  2  Mai.  iii.  1. 


Lect.  xlv.  the  doctrine  of  angels.  183 

appears  in  the  constant  substitution  of  "  Angels  "  in 
passages  where  the  original  Hebrew  contained  only 
the  name  of  God.  In  the  Psalms  immediately  follow- 
ing the  Return,1  they  stand  at  the  head  of  the  works 
of  Creation.  Already,  in  the  visions2  of  Ezekiel  and 
Zechariah,  their  innermost  circle  was  dimly  arranged  in 
the  mystic  number  of  seven.  In  the  Book  of  Daniel, 
whether  Babylonian  or  Syrian,  we  find,  for  the  first 
time,  two  names  assigned  —  Michael,3  the  champion  of 
Israel,  with  the  challenge  "  Who  is  like  God  ?  "  to  reap- 
pear as  the  guardian  of  the  High  Places  of  Christen- 
dom and  as  the  Protector  of  the  kingdom  of  France  ; 
"Gabriel,4  the  hero  of  God,"  the  harbinger  of  the  Di- 
vine purposes.  In  the  book  of  Tobit  a  third  is  added 
—  Raphael,5  the  "  sociable  spirit"  of  healing,  the  "  Di- 
"  vine  Healer."  The  others  are  not  yet  named.  But 
the  fourth,  "  Uriel,  the  light  of  God,"  the  regent  of 
the  sun,  follows  next.  And  then,  with  doubtful  splen- 
dor, we  faintly  hear  of  Phaniel,  Raguel,  and  Zarakiel, 
or  else  of  Zaphkiel,  Zadkiel,  and  Gamaliel,  or  else  of 
Salathiel,  Jehudial,  and  Berachiah,  or  else  of  Jeremial, 
Sariel,  and  Azael.6  The  contradictory  and  wavering 
nomenclature  reminds  us  how  uncertain  is  the  ground 
on  which  we  tread.  And  when  we  inquire  yet  further 
for  the  traces  of  those  doctrines  which  have  left  so 
deep  an  impress  on  the  theology  and  poetry  of  Chris- 

1  Psalm  cxlviii.  2.  person    He    sends     the    Archangel 

2  Ezek.  ix.  11;  Zech.  hi.   2,   10;     Raphael    to    accomplish    the    cure. 
Tobit  xii.  15;  Rev.  i.  14;  iv.  5,  6;     (Jerome  on  Dan.  viii.) 

viii.  2.  6  See   the  references   in   the   ex- 

8  Dan.  xii.  1  ;  x.  13,  21  ;  Jude  9  ;  haustive    note   of   Dr.  Ginsburg   on 

Rev.  xii.  7.  Eccles.  v.   5,  and   also  in  Kalisch's 

4  Dan.  viii.  16;  ix.  21;  Luke  i.  11,  Commentary  (vol.  ii.  290).    Compare 

20,  26,  35.  Nicolas'     Doctrines    religieuses    det 

6  Tobit  iii.  17;  xii.  15;  Enoch  xl.  Juifs,  220. 

8      When  God  would  cure  any  sick 


184  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

tendom,  the  creation  and  the  fall1  of  the  Angels,  or 
yet  again  for  the  warrant  of  those  splendid  winged 
forms  2  with  which  Guido  and  Fra  Angelico  have  made 
us  familiar  in  the  realm  of  Art,  and  which  have  sunk 
deep  into  the  common  parlance  of  Europe,  it  must 
be  confessed  that  not  even  in  these  later  books,  still 
less  in  the  earlier  visions  of  the  prophets  of  Israel,  is 
there  the  least  foundation.  Still,  the  general  and 
pervasive  belief  in  the  intervention  of  these  unearthly 
"  messengers,"  combining  with  the  earthly  but  not 
less  Divine  "  Messenger  "  of  the  prophecy  of  Malachi, 
dates  from  this  epoch.  There  is  a  lofty  truth,  however 
overgrown  with  fantastic  legend,  in  the  vision  of 
a  long  vista  of  celestial  beauty,  power,  and  goodness 
through  which  the  soul  looks  upward  to  the  Throne 
of  the  Unseen;  and  this  truth  has  become,  from  the 
age  of  Malachi,  firmly  enshrined  in  the  poetic  side 
of  Hebrew  and  Christian  as  of  Persian  and  Arabian 
theology.  Out  of  the  slight  and  often  coarse  mate- 
rials that  the  Books  of  the  Captivity  and  of  the 
Return  provide,  have  been  evolved,  not  only  the  pro- 
digious extravagances3  of  the  Talmud,  but  also  the 
noblest  strains  of  Spenser  and  of  Milton,  the  image, 
never  since  to  depart  from  mankind,  of  "  the  angelic  " 
character  as  distinct  even  from  the  "  saintly  "  or  "  the 
"virtuous" — the  conviction  that  there  is  a  fulfilment 
of  the  Divine  Will  more  perfectly  carried  out  in  the 
ideal  heaven  than  on  the  actual  earth. 

1  The  only  passages  which  would  expression  in  Dan.  ix.  21,  "flying 
appear  to  indicate  this  doctrine  are  "  swiftly,"  should  be  either  "coming 
2  Peter  ii.  4,  and  Jnde  6,  and  these  "swiftly,"  or  "greatly  fatigued." 
manifestly  refer  only  to  Gen.  vi.  4.  The    first    indication   of    wings    to 

2  The  six-winged  seraphs  of  Isa.  "  angels"  is  in  Rev.  xiv.  6. 

vi.  2,  and  the  double-winged  cherubs         8  See    Kalisch's    Commentary,   ii 
•>i  1   Kings  vi.  24,  are  not  "  messen-     305-317. 
4ger~"  or  "angels"  at  all.     The 


Lect.  XLV.    CONTRAST  BETWEEN  THE  REAL  AND  IDEAL.     185 

II.  The  second  doctrine  which  pervades  the  book  of 


Malachi   is   one  which,   though   never  absent  The 


o* 


run- 


altogether  from  the  Prophetic  mind,  is  brought  tween  the 
out  here  with  a  point  which  cannot  be  evaded,  ideal. 
It  is  the  contrast  —  so  vital  to  any  true  conception 
of  religion  in  every  age,  but  so  frequently  forgotten  — 
between  the  real  and  the  ideal  in  religious  institutions. 
By  the  side  of  the  selfish  and  untruthful  hierarchy, 
who  were  the  main  causes  of  the  unbelief  which  pre- 
vailed around  them,  there  rose  the  vision  of  perfect 
truthfulness  and  fairness,1  unswerving  fear  of  the 
Eternal  name  as  conceived  in  the  original  idea  of 
the  Priesthood.  And,  again,  within  the  innermost 
pale  of  the  Church,  behind  the  cynical  questionings 
of  some  and  the  superficial  devotions  of  others,  the 
Prophet2  saw  the  almost  invisible  circle  of  those  whose 
reverence  for  the  Eternal  remained  unshaken,  who  kept 
the  sacred  treasure  of  truth  intact ;  of  whom  the  names 
are  for  the  most  part  unknown  in  the  long,  vacant 
history  of  four  centuries  that  follow,  but  who  may  be 
traced  in  a  true  Divine  succession  which  runs  through 
this  obscure  period,  and  of  which  the  links  from  time 
to  time  appear,  —  Simon  the  Just,  the  son  of  Sirach, 
Judas  Maccabaeus,  the  martyred  Onias,  the  high- 
minded  Mariamne,  the  large-minded  Hillel,  Zechariah 
and  Elizabeth,  Simeon  and  Anna,  Joseph  and  Mary. 
To  recover  these  lost  jewels,  to  sift  the  dross  of  society 
from  the  ore  of  gold  and  silver  which  lies  in  the  worst 
rubbish  of  superstition  and  moral  degradation,  is  the 
hope  of  the  Prophet  amidst  the  despairing  sense  of 
failure  and  dejection,  which,  if  less  clamorous  than  the 
Lamentations  of  Jeremiah,  or  the  invectives  of  Isaiah, 
implies   a   deeper   conviction    of   the   weight    of   evil 

1  Mai.  ii.  5,  6.  2  Mai.  iii.  16,  17. 


186  ,      MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

against  which    the    cause    of  uprightness   has   to   con- 
tend. 

And  in  harmony  with  this  inquiring,  sifting,  and  at 
the  same  time  melancholy,  vein  of  thought,  is  the 
mournful  tone  of  the  contemporary  book  1  whose  story 
we  have  already  drawn  out  in  describing  its  por- 
traiture of  Solomon,  but  whose  lessons  derive  a  pro- 
founder  significance  if  taken  as  expressing  the  same 
dark  view  of  the  world  as  breathes  through  the  almost 
equally  misanthropic  cries  of  Malachi.2  The  Asiatic 
Doctrineof  world  seemed  to  be  sick  of  crime  and  folly. 
spirit.  The  weary  soul  tosses  to  and  fro  in  the  effort 
to  distract  and  sustain  its  upward  tendencies.  %In  the 
midst  of  this  perplexity  it  is  not  surprising  that  for 
the  first  time  we  begin  to  trace  a  keener  sense  of  an 
obstinate,  inveterate  principle  of  evil  —  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  more  determined  obstruction  of  good  than 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures  had  yet  exhibited.  Faintly, 
very  faintly,  in  the  Book  of  Job,3  and  in  the  vision  of 
Micaiah  the  son  of  Imlah,  there  was  disclosed  in  the 
Courts  of  Heaven  a  spirit  rendering  its  account  with 
the  other  ministers  of  the  Divine  Will,  yet  with  some- 
thing of  a  malicious  pleasure  in  the  mischief  which 
was  produced  by  the  calamities  it  caused.  Perhaps,  in 
the  vision  of  Zechariah,  the  same  spirit  as  had  ap- 
peared in  the  opening  of  the  poem  of  Job  returns, 
as  the  "  adversary  "  of  the  innocent.4  Certainly,  in 
the  Book  of  Chronicles,  it  appears  in  the  place 
which  the  earlier  Prophetic  books  assigned  to  the 
Eternal 6  Himself,  as  tempting  David  to  number  Israel. 

1  See  Lecture  XXVIIT.  *  Zech.  iii.  1. 

2  Eccles  i.  13-15;  iii.  16;  iv.  1  ;  6  Comp.  2  Sara.  xxiv.  1,  and  1 
»i.  2.  Chron.  xxi.  1. 

8  Job  i.  6  ;  1  Kino;s  xxii.  21. 


Lect.  xlv.    the  doctrine  of  the  -evil  spirit.  187 

Certainly,  in  the  Book  of  Tobit,  a  demon  plays  the 
malignant  part  which  in  the  Greek  or  the  Teutonic 
world  are  assigned  to  the  evil  deities  or  wicked  fairies 
of  their  mythology.  In  the  book  of  Wisdom  —  what- 
ever be  its  date  —  is  the  first 1  mention  of  the  "  envy 
"  of  the  Devil  "  in  connection  with  the  entrance  of 
death  into  the  world.  In  the  Maccabsean  history 
the  obnoxious  fort  which  overhung  the  temple  is 2 
described,  almost  in  modern  phrase,  as  a  living  creat- 
ure, "  a  wicked  fiend  or  devil."  Such  are  the  frag- 
mentary notices  of  an  incipient  personification,  out 
of  which  has  gradually  sprung  up  the  doctrine  of  a 
hierarchy  of  evil  spirits,  corresponding  to  the  hosts 
of  Angels  —  which  has  in  its  turn  passed  through 
every  shape  and  form  from  the  Talmud  to  the  Fathers, 
from  the  grotesque  Satyr  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
splendor  of  the  ruined  Archangel  of  Milton's  "  Par- 
"  adise  Lost,"  the  scoffing  cynicism  of  Goethe's  Meph- 
istopheles,  and  the  malignity  of  the  "Little  Master" 
of  La  Motte  Fouque.  That  peculiar  sense  of  the 
depth  and  subtlety  of  the  evil  principle  which  mani- 
fested itself  in  the  various  figures  of  malignant  power 
—  now  single,  now  multiplied,  now  shadowy,  now 
distinct,  now  ridiculous,  and  now  sublime  —  had  its 
root  in  the  dark  and  solemn  view  of  the  moral  govern- 
ment of  the  world,  of  which  the  first  germs  are  seen 
in  Malachi  and  Ecclesiastes.  This  Hebrew  conception 
of  the  evil,  the  devilish,  element  in  man  and  in  nature 
is  twofold.  '  It  is  either  of  the  a  accusing  "  spirit,  that 
seizes  on  the  dark  and  the  trivial  side  of  even  the 
greatest  and  the  best  —  or  else  of  the  "hostile"  ob- 
struction that  stands  in  the  way  of  progress  and  of 
goodness.    Round  these  two  central  ideas,  of  which  the 

i  Wisdom  ii.  23.  2  1  Mace.  i.  36. 


188  MALACHL 


Lect.  XLV. 


one  has  prevailed  in  the l  Hellenic,  the  other  in  the 
Semitic 2  forms  of  speech,  have  congregated  all  the  va- 
rious doctrines,  legends,  truths,  and  fictions  which  have 
so  long  played  a  part  in  the  theology  and  the  poetry 
alike  of  Judaism,  Islam,  and  Christendom.  The  antag- 
onism which  had  prevailed  in  the  earlier3  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  between  Jehovah  and  the  gods  of  the 
heathen  world  disappeared  as  the  idea  of  the  Divine 
Nature  became  more  elevated  and  more  comprehen- 
sive, and  in  its  place  came  the  antagonism  between 
God  as  the  Supreme  Good,  and  evil  as  His  only  true 
enemy  and  rival  —  an  antagonism,  which,  however 
much  it  may  have  been  at  times  degraded  and  exag- 
gerated, yet  is  in  itself  the  legitimate  product  of  that 
nobler  idea  of  Deity.  A  profound  detestation  of  moral 
evil,  the  abhorrence  of  those  more  malignant  forms 
of  it  to  which  the  language  of  Christian  Europe  ha3 
given  the  name  of  "  diabolical,"  or  "  devilish,"  or 
"fiendish,"  is  the  dark  shadow  of  the  bright  admira- 
tion of  virtue,  is  the  indispensable  condition  of  the 
intense  worship  of  the  Divine  Goodness. 

III.  This  leads  us  to  a  third  doctrine  of  the  Prophet 
Cnh-er-       Malachi,  which    serves  as  a  starting-point  for 

salitvof  .  .  .  .  , 

God.  the  questions  which  this  particular  epoch  sug- 

gests for  our  consideration.  It  is  the  assertion  —  not 
new  in  itself,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out,  but  new 
from  the  force  and  precision  with  which  the  truth  is 
driven  home  —  of  the  absolute  equality,  in  the  Divine 
judgment,  of  all  pure  and  sincere  worship  throughout 
the  world.  In  rejecting  the  half-hearted  and  niggardly 
offerings  of  the  Jewish  Church,  the  Prophet  reminds 


1    I  lie     Accuser  —  Slanderer  — 

2  The      Enemy  — 

"  Satan  " 

'  — 

DiaboluB  "  —  "  Devil." 

"Fiend." 

3  E\v;ild,  v.  184. 

Lect.  xlv.  the  universality  of  god.  189 

his  readers  not  only  that  their  offerings  are  not  needed 
by  Him  whom  they  seek  to  propitiate  by  them,  but 
that  from  the  farthest  East,  where  the  sun  rises  above 
the  earth,  to  the  remotest  western  horizon,  where  he 
sinks  beneath  it,  the  Eternal  name,  under  whatever 
form,  is  great ;  that  among  the  innumerable  races  out- 
side the  Jewish  pale,  —  not  only  in  Jerusalem,  but  in 
evei-y  place  over  that  wide  circumference,  —  the  cloud 
ot  incense  that  goes  up  from  altars,  of  whatever  temple, 
is,  if  faithfully  rendered,  a  pure,  unpolluted  offering  to 
that  Divine  Presence,  known  or  unknown,  throughout 
all  the  nations  of  mankind.1  It  is  a  truth  which  met 
with  a  partial  exemplification,  as  we  shall  see,  in  con- 
nection with  the  great  religious  systems  which,  in  the 
vacant  space  on  which  we  are  now  entering,  pressed 
upon  the  Jewish  creed  and  ritual.  It  is  a  truth  which 
was  raised  to  the  first  order  of  religious  doctrine  by 
Him  who  declared  that  "  many  should 2  come  from  East 
"  and  West,  and  sit  down  in  the  kingdom  ;  "  and  by  the 
disciples,  who  repeated  it  after  Him  almost  in  the 
words  of  Malachi,  though  without  a  figure,  that :  "  In 
"  every  nation  he  that  feareth 3  Him  and  worketh  right- 
"  eousness  is  accepted  of  Him;"  and  that  "not  the 
"  hearers  of  the  law,  but  the  doers  of  the  law,  who  have 
"  not 4  the  law,  shall  be  justified."  It  is  a  truth  which, 
after  a  long  period  of  neglect,  and  even  of  bitter  con- 
demnation, has  become  in  our  days  the  basis  of  the  great 
science  of  comparative  theology,  and  has  slowly  re- 
entered the  circle  of  practical  and  religious  thought. 

In  the  entire  vacancy  in  the  annals  of  the  Jewish 
nation  which  follows  the  times  of  Nehemiah  there  is  one 
single  incident  recorded  which  is  an  exact  comment  on 

1  Mai.  i.  11.  3  Actsx.  3,  4. 

2  Matt.  viii.  11.  4  Rom.  ii.  13. 


190  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

the  contrast  which  Malachi  draws  between  the  degener- 
ate Priesthood  of  his  own  day  with  the  purer  elements 
Storvof  of  the  Gentile  world.  In  that  corrupt  family 
Bag6ses.  of  Eliashib,  which  occupied  the  High  Priest- 
hood, there  was  one  deed  at  this  time  darker  than  any 
that  had  preceded  it,  —  "more  dreadful,"  says  the  his- 
torian —  who  reports  it  in  terms  which  seem  almost  the 
echo  of  Malachi's  indignant  language  — "  than  any 
"  which  had  been  known  among  the  nations,  civilized  or 
"  uncivilized,  outside  the  Jewish  pale."  His  two  sons 
both  aimed  at  their  father's  office,  which  then,  as  before 
and  often  afterwards,  was  in  the  gift  of  the  foreign 
Governor  residing  at  Jerusalem.  John  was  in  pos- 
session. But  Bagoses,  the  Governor,  favored  Joshua.1 
The  two  brothers  met  in  the  Temple,  and  the  elder, 
stung  by  jealousy,  murdered  the  younger  on  the  floor 
of  the  sanctuary.  The  Governor,  filled  with  just  anger, 
descended  from  his  fortress-tower,  like  Lysias  in  later 
days,  and  burst  into  the  Temple.  The  sacerdotal  guar- 
dians endeavored  to  resist  the  sacrilegious  intruder,  as 
he  advanced,  reproaching  them  with  the  crime.  But  he 
thrust  them  aside,  and  penetrated,  it  would  seem,  into 
the  sacred  edifice  itself,  where  the  corpse  lay  stretched 
upon  the  Temple  pavement.  "  What,"  he  exclaimed, 
"  am  I  not  cleaner  than  the  dead  carcass  of  him  whom 
"  ye  have  murdered  ?  "  The  words  of  Bagoses  lived  in 
the  recollection  of  those  who  heard  them.  They  ex- 
pressed the  universal  but  unwelcome  truth,  "  Is  not  a 
"  good  Persian  better  than  a  bad  Jew  ?  "  — or,  to  turn  it 
into  the  form  of  the  indignant  question  of  a  great  mod- 
ern theologian,  "  Who  would  not  meet  the  judgment  of 
"  the  Divine  Redeemer  loaded  with  the  errors  of  Nesto- 
"  rius  rather  than  with  the  crimes  of  Cyril  ?  " 2 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xi.  7,  §  1.  2  Milmun's  Hist,  of  Latin  Chris- 

tianity, i.  145 


Lbct.  XLV.    RELATIONS  TO   THE  PERSIAN  EMPIRE.  191 

IV.  It  is  in  the  light  of  this   principle,  clearly  fore- 
shadowed by  the  Evangelical   Prophet  of  the  Rfeiations 
Captivity,    that   we   may  proceed  to  ask  the  q^q 
question,  which  naturally  forces  itself  upon  us,  world' 
before  we  leave  this  period  of  the  Jewish  history  :  What 
traces  were  left  upon  it  by  the  circumstances  of  the  new 
sphere  which  had  opened  upon  them  through  the  con- 
nection of  Israel  with  the  Persian  Empire  ?     "We  have 
seen  what  elements  in  the  development  of  the  national 
religion  were  due  to  their  stay  in  Babylon.     We  have 
now  to  ask  what  elements,  if  any,  were  added  by  the 
other  forces  now  brought  into  contact  with  them  in  the 
Eastern  or  Western  world. 

I.  The  first  influence  to  be  considered  in  the  re- 
trospect of  this  period  is  the  general  effect  of  The  persian 
the  Persian  Monarchy  on  the  manners  and  the  EmPire- 
imagination  of  the  Jewish  race.  If,  with  all  the  alien- 
ation of  exiles,  almost  of  rebels,  there  had  yet  been 
an  attraction  for  them  in  the  magnificent  power  of  the 
Babylonian  Empire,  there  could  not  have  been  less  in 
the  forms,  hardly  less  august,  and  far  more  friendly, 
that  surrounded  the  successors  of  their  benefactor 
Cyrus.  We  have  seen  how  closely  they  clung  to  that 
protection  ;  how  intimate  their  relations  with  the  Per- 
sian Governor,  who  resided  almost  within  the  Temple 
precincts  ;  how  complete 1  his  control  over  their  most 
sacred  functionaries ;  how  the  letters  and  decrees  of  its 
kings  were  placed  almost  on  the  level  of  their  sacred 
books.  From  the  exceptionally  kindly  relations  be- 
tween the  Court  of  Susa  and  the  Jewish  colony  at  this 
time,  it  has  come  to  pass  that  even  to  this  day  the  King 
of  Persia  is  the  only  existing 2  Potentate  of  the  world 

1  Neh.  xiii.  4-9;  Josepkus,  Ant.,         2  This  was  beyond  doubt  the  one 
xi.  7.  main    reason   of    the   extraordinary 


192  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

whose  name  appeals  to  the  common  sentiment  as  a  Bib- 
lical  personage. 

There  is  one  writing  of  this  period  in  which  these 
relations  are  especially  brought  out.  Even  more  than 
The  Book  the  Book  of  Job  is  Idumsean,  and  the  Book  of 
of  Esther ;  Daniel  Babylonian,  is  the  Book  of  Esther  Per- 
sian. It  is  the  one  example  in  the  sacred  volume  of  a 
story  of  which  the  whole  scenery  and  imagery  breathes 
the  atmosphere  of  an  Oriental  Court  as  completely  and 
almost  as  exclusively  as  the  "  Arabian  Nights."  We 
are  in  the  Palace  at  Susa.1  We  are  in  that  splendid 
hall  of  Darius,  of  which  no  vestige  now  remains,  but 
which  can  be  completely  represented  to  our  sight  by 
the  still  existing  ruins  of  the  contemporary  hall  at 
Persepolis,  that  edifice  of  which  it  has  been  said  that 
no  interior  of  any  building,  ancient  or  modern,  not 
Egyptian  Karnac,  not  Cologne  Cathedral,  could  rival  it 
in  space  and  beauty.  The  only  feature  found  at  Per- 
sepolis which  was  wanting  at  Susa  was  the  splendid 
staircase  — "  noblest  example  of  a  flight  of  stairs  to 
"  be  found  in  any  part  of  the  world." 2  All  else  was  in 
Shushan  "  the  Palace  fortress  "  —  the  colossal  bulls  at 
the  entrance  ;  the  vast  pillars,  sixty  feet  high,  along  its 
nave  ;  the  pavement  of  colored  marbles,  as  the  author 
its  local  of  the  Book  of  Esther  repeats,  as  if  recalling 
color  after  color  that  had   feasted  his  eyes  — 

interest    manifested    by    the    lower  royal  residence.     The  word  (Bireh) 

classes  of  England  in  the  visit  of  the  is  elsewhere  only  used  for  the   lVr- 

Shah    of   Persia    in    IS 74.     I   may,  sian  Governor's  residence    at   Jern- 

perhaps,  lie  permitted  to  refer  to  a  salem  —  as    (like  the  Prsetorium   in 

Bermon  preached  on  that  occasion  in  the    Roman    camps    and   provinces) 

Westminster  Abbey  on  the  '•  Persian  each  such  residence  was  regarded  as 

"  King."  Susa  in  miniature. 

1  "  Shushan  the  Palace"    is   the         2  See   Fergusson   on  "Susa"    in 

form  in  Esther  i.  2,  Dan.  viii.  1,  as  the  Diet,  of  the  Bible.     Rawlinson's 

if  it  was   the   official   name  of   the  Ancient  Monarchies,  iv.  269-287. 


Lect.  XLV.  ESTHER.  193 

"  red,  and  blue,  and  white,  and  black  "  —  and  the  cur- 
tains ]  hanging  from  pillar  to  pillar, "  white,  and  green, 
"  and  purple,"  fastened  with  cords  of  "  white  and 
"  purple."  There  it  was  that,  overlooking  from  the 
terraced  heights  on  which  the  hall  was  built,  the  plains 
of  the  Ulai,  Ahasuerus,  whose  name  was  Grsecized  into 
Xerxes,  gave,  in  the  third  year  of  his  reign,  a  half- 
year's  festival.  There,  in  the  gardens2  within  the 
palace,  on  the  slope  of  the  palatial  hill,  was  the  ban- 
quet, like  those  given  by  the  Emperor  of  China,  to  the 
whole  population  of  the  Province.  Round  the  Great 
King,3  as  he  sat  on  his  golden  throne,  with  the  fans 
waving  over  his  head,  which  still  linger  in  the  cere- 
monial of  the  chief  ecclesiastic  of  the  Latin  Church, 
were  the  seven  Princes  of  Persia  and  Media  which  saw 
the  King's  face  "  when  others  saw  it  not,"  and  the  first 
in  the  kingdom  —  the  sacred  number  seven  which  per- 
vaded the  whole  Court.  There  took  place  the  succession 
of  violent  scenes,  so  thoroughly  characteristic  of  Ori- 
ental despotism,  but  to  which  the  Hebrew  historian  was 
so  familiarized  that  they  appear  to  fill  him  rather  with 
admiration  than  astonishment  and  horror,  the  order  for 
the  Queen  to  unveil  herself —  contrary  to  the  imme- 
morial 4  usage  of  Persia,  and  therefore  the  sure  sign  of 

1  Esther  i.  6.  the  violence  in  which  he  resembled 

2  This    seems    to   be    implied   in     Xerxes,  caused  commentators  to  be 
Esther  i.  5.  reluctant  in  admitting  his  identifica- 

8  That  Ahasuerus  is  Xerxes,  and  tion  with   a   prince  whose   memory 

that  the  third  and  seventh  years  of  our  sympathy  with  the  Greek  histo- 

bis  reign  (Esther  i.  3;  ii.)  thus  coin-  rians  had  so  disparaged, 
cide  respectively  with  his  departure         4  In  the  annual  Persian  represen- 

on   his   great   expedition  to  Greece  tation  of  the  tragedy  of  the  sons  of 

and  his  return  from  it  is  now  gen-  Ali  an  English  ambassador  is  brought 

erally  agreed.     It   is  curious  to  ob-  in  as   begging   their   lives  ;    and    to 

serve  that  the   halo  thrown  around  mark  his  nationality  a  boy  dressed 

Ahasuerus  by  the  Book  of   Esther,  up   as   an  unveiled   woman   accom 

whilst  it  blinded  modern  readers  to  panies  him  as  the  ambassadress. 
25 


194  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

the  King's  omnipotence  —  before  the  assembled  Court, 
the  rage  of  the  King  at  her  refusal,  her  instantaneous 
divorce,  the  universal  decree  founded  on  this  single 
case,  the  strange  procession  of  maidens  for  the  selec- 
tion of  the  new  Queen.  Not  less  characteristic  are  all 
the  incidents  which  follow  —  the  conversations  in  .  the 
harem ;  the  jealousy  between  the  two  foreign  cour- 
tiers *  —  "  the  King's  gate  "  —  the  large  square 2  tower, 
still  in  part  remaining,  where  the  Jewish  favorite  sat, 
as  in  his  place  of  honor,  like  the  Gate  of  Justice  in  the 
Alhambra,  or  the  Sublime  Porte  at  Stamboul  —  and 
the  reckless  violence  of  the  royal  command  to  enjoin 
the  massacre  of  the  whole  Jewish  race.  Then  come 
the  various  scenes  of  the  catastrophe,  every  one  of 
which  is  full  of  the  local  genius  of  the  Empire,  as  we 
know  it  alike  through  the  accounts  of  the  earliest 
Grecian  travellers  and  the  latest  English  investigators. 
The  same  chronicles  in  which,  as  Xerxes3  sat  on  the 
rocky  brow  "  that  looks  o'er  sea-born  Salamis,"  he 
had  ordered  to  be4  recorded  the  valiant  acts  of  any 
who  did  the  State  good  service  are  brought  before  him 
at  Shushan  to  soothe  his  sleepless  nights.  We  are 
made  to  feel  the  inaccessibility  of  the  King  to  any  but 
the  seven  Councillors,  the  awe  with  which  his  presence 
was  surrounded,  which  required  all  persons  introduced 
to  fall  on  their  faces  before  him,  and  on  pain  of  death 
to  cover  their  hands  in  the  folds  of  their  sleeves,5  the 
executioners  standing  round  with 6  their  axes,  instantly 

1  Any  one  declining  to  stand  as     honef-Shah,    "The   King's    Gate" 
(he  Grand  Vizier   passes   is  almost     (Morier). 

beaten  In  death  (Morier).  3  Esther  vi.  1,  2;  Herod.,  vii. 

2  Fergusson  on  "  Susa."    The  en-         4  Such  was  the  Shah  Nahmeh  of 
trance  where  the  Grand  Vizier  and     Firdousi. 

others  sit  awaiting  the  King's  pleas-         5  llawlinson,  iv.  180. 
tire  is  still    called  in  Persia  Derek-         6  Josephus,  Ant.,  xi.  (3,  3. 


Lect.  XLV.  THE   BOOK  OF  ESTHER.  195 

to  behead  any  rash  intruder.  It  is  this  makes  the 
turning-point  of  Esther's  clanger,  from  which  she  is 
only  spared  by  the  mark  of  royal  absolution  in  the  ex- 
tension of  the  golden  sceptre  (as  in  modern  1  times  by 
touching  the  skirt  of  the  King's  robe) ;  it  is  this  which 
brings  about  the  sudden  extinction  of  Hainan's  family, 
falling,  as  whole  households  btill  fall,  in  the  ruin  of 
their 2  head.  We  are  led  to  understand  the  fantastic 
consequences  of  the  investment  of  the  King  with  the 
attribute  of  personal  infallibility,3  thus  making  it  im- 
possible for  him  even  to  offer  to  repeal  any  of  his  own 
decrees,  which,  immediately  on  their  utterance,  pass 
into  the  sacred  recesses  of  the  laws  of  Medes  and  Per- 
sians that  no  power  can  alter.  Hence  results  the  dif- 
ficulty in  the  way  of  revoking  the  atrocious  decree 
against  the  Jewish  settlers,  and  therefore  the  necessity 
(as  in  a  well-known  modern  parallel)  of  minimizing  its 
effect  by  issuing  orders  in  theory  acknowledging,  in 
practice  contradicting  it.  And,  finally,  we  come  across 
the  then  world-renowned  institution  of  the  Persian 
posts,  established  by  Darius  throughout  the  Empire,  the 
stations  of  relays  of  horses4  along  the  plains,  mules  on 
the  mountain  districts,  camels  and  dromedaries  on  the 
arid  table-lands ; 6  the  couriers  succeeding  each  other 
with  a  rapidity  that  could  only  be  compared  to  the 
flight  of  birds.  This  it  was  which  enabled  the  victims 
of  the  intended  massacre  to  receive  the  royal  permis- 
sion for  their  own  self-defence  to  the  last  extremity 
against  the  executioners  of  the  King's  own  orders. 
Even  the  names  which  most  closely  connect  the  story 

1  Morier.  Herod.,  ix.  109.    See  Rawlinson,  iv. 

2  Esther  vii.  8.     A  dark  shawl  is     181. 

still  thrown  over  the  face  of  a  con-         4  Esther  viii.  10;  Herod.,  viii   98. 
deraned  person  (Morier).  Xen.,  Cyrop.,  viii.  6,  17,  18. 

3  Dan.    vi.    15;    Esther  viii.    11;        5  Esther  viii.  10  (Morier). 


196  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

with  the  history  of  Israel  are  not  Hebrew,  but  Chaldrean 
or  Persian.  Mordecai  is  "  the  worshipper  of  Merodach, 
"  the  War-God  of  Babylon." l  "  Esther  "  is  "  the  star2 
"  of  the  planet  Venus."  The  Purim,s  from  which  the 
Festival  of  Deliverance  took  its  name,  is  the  Persian 
word  for  "  lot,"  and  has  even  been  supposed  to  be  the 
name  for  an  ancient  Persian  solemnity. 

Such  is  the  singular  antiquarian  interest  which  at- 
its  religious  taches  to  this,  the  most  vivid  picture  that  we 
interest.  possess  of  the  inner  life  of  the  Persian  seraglio. 
But  beneath  this  external  show  there  is  a  genuine  strain 
of  national  and  human  interest,  which  secured  the  little 
narrative,  worldly  as  it  might  seem  to  be,  a  welcome 
into  the  sacred  books  of  the  Jews,  and  drew  round  it, 
like  the  writings  of  Daniel  and  Ezra,  a  fringe  of  amplifi- 
cations and  additions  by  which  the  theological  suscepti- 
bilities of  later  times  sought  to  correct  its  deficiencies. 

The  treatment  of  the  book  has  much  varied  in  the 
Jewish  and  the  Christian  Churches. 

The  immediate  claim  of  the  story  to  a  place  in  the 
The  Book  Holy  Books  was  the  consecration  which  it  gave 
persion.  the  Jews  of  the  Dispersion.  Alone  of  all  the 
Books  of  the  Old  Testament  it  contains  no  reference  to 
the  Holy  Land.  When  Hainan  is  asked  to  describe  the 
objects  of  his  hostility,  he  replied  in  words  which  every 
Israelite  through  all  the  hundred  and  twenty  satrapies, 

1  See  Gesenius  ad  voc.  sion,  reappearing  in  the  other  Aryan 

2  Ibid.,  quoting  the  Targum  on  languages  as  pars,  part.  On  this 
Esther  ii.  7.  It  is  the  Persian  word  point  Ewald  and  Gesenius  express 
sitara;  in  Sanscrit  tara  ;  in  Zend  no  doubt.  It  is  possible,  but  it  seems 
stara  ;  in  Western  languages  aster,  entirely  superfluous,  to  suppose,  with 
gtira,  star.  Hadassafi  (her  Hebrew  Kuenen  (iii.  149)  that  the  festival  in 
name)  is  either  "myrtle"  or  else  a  question  was  that  described  by  the 
Hebraized  form  of  the  Persian  Byzantine  historian  Menander  ten 
A tossa.  centuries  afterward  under  the  name 

8  Pur,  the  Persian  word  for  divi-     of  Furdi<ran. 


Lect.  XLV.  THE  FEAST  OF  PURIM.  197 

from  India  to  Ethiopia,  must  have  applied  to  himself.1 
"  There  is  a  certain  people  scattered  and  dispersed  in 
"  all  the  provinces  of  thy  kingdom  and  their  laws  are 
"diverse  from  all  people."  Along  the  banks  of  the 
Euphrates  and  Tigris,  already  renowned  for  their  schools 
of  learning ;  high  up  in  the  mountains  of  Kurdistan, 
where,  perchance,  their  descendants  linger  still ;  all  the 
dispersed  settlers  were  included  in  those  words,  which 
might  stand  as  the  motto  of  the  larger  part  of  the  Jew- 
ish race  ever  since  —  which  might  have  been  said  of 
them  by  Tacitus  in  the  Roman  Empire,  or  by  the  Ara- 
bian or  English  chroniclers  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
line  of  beacon-lights  kindled  from  hill  to  hill  along  the 
whole  route  from  Jerusalem  to  Babylon,2  "  from  Olivet 
"  to  Sartaba,  from  Sartaba  to  Grophinah,  from  Gro- 
"  phinah  to  Haveran,  from  Haveran  to  Beth  Baltin,  wav- 
"  ing  the  torches  upward  and  downward,  till  the  whole 
"  country  of  the  Captivity  appeared  a  blazing  fire  "  — 
was  an  apt  emblem  of  the  sympathetic  links  which 
bound  all  these  settlements  together.  Of  this  vast  race, 
for  whom  so  great  a  destiny  was  reserved  when  the  na- 
tion should  fail,  the  Book  of  Esther  recognized,  as  by  a 
prophetic  instinct,  the  future  importance.  Every  Jew 
throughout  the  world  felt  with  Mordecai,  and  has  felt 
in  many  a  time  of  persecution  since,  as  he  raised  in 
the  city  his  loud  and  bitter  cry,  and  stood  wrapped  in 
sackcloth  and  sprinkled  with  ashes  before  the  Royal 
Gate.  Every  Jewess  felt,  and  may  have  felt  ever  since, 
with  Esther  as  she  prepared  herself  for  the  dreadful 
venture. 

It  was  this  which  gave  a  significance  to  the  long  sue 
cession  of  idle  coincidences,  as  it  seemed,  on  the  The  Feast 
failure   of  any  one   of  which   the  catastrophe  of  Punm- 

1  Esther  iii.  8.  2  Mishna  (Rosh  Hashanah,  ii.  4). 


198  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

would  have  taken  place ;  culminating  in  the  fortunate 
chance  that  when  the  enemy  of  their  race,  after  the 
manner  of  the  East,  cast  lots  to  secure  a  propitious  day 
for  so  vast  an  enterprise,  beginning  with  the  first  month 
of  the  year,  he  was  compelled,  by  the  failure  of  the  lots, 
to  go  on,  day  after  day,  and  month  after  month,1  until 
he  was  driven  to  the  loth  clay  of  the  very  last  month  as 
the  only  auspicious  time  for  the  commencement  of  the 
massacre ;  thus  leaving,  between  the  issuing  of  the  de- 
cree and.  the  arrival  of  that  fatal  day,  eight  months  for 
the  posts  to  carry  the  King's  warrant  to  the  ends  of  the 
Empire,  and  for  every  Jewish  settlement  in  every  vil- 
lage, however  remote  and  however  defenceless,  to  stand 
at  bay  against  the  hunters  of  their  lives.  The  "  Feast 
"  of  the  Lots  "  became  the  Passover  of  the  Dispersion. 
It  preceded  the  Paschal  Feast  by  only  a  month,  and,  to 
make  the  parallel  complete,  was  celebrated,  not  on  the 
predestined  and  triumphant  day,  the  loth,  but  on  the 
14th  and  15th  of  Adar,  corresponding2  to  the  14th  and 
15th  of  the  Paschal  month,  Nisan. 

The  continuance  of  that  bitter  animosity  in  the  Jew- 
ish nation  renders  the  Feast  of  Purim  the  least  pleasing 
of  their  festivals.  It  was  long  retained  in  all  its  inten- 
sity as  the  natural  vent  of  their  hatred  to  their  heathen 
or  Christian  oppressors  in  each  succeeding  age.  On 
that  day,  at  every  mention  of  Hainan's  name  in  the 
worship  of  the  synagogue,  it  was  long  the  custom  to  hiss 
and  stamp  and  shake  the  clinched  fist  and  say :  "  Let 
"  his  name  be  blotted  out,  Let  the  name  of  the  wicked 
"  perish."  The  boys  who  were  present  with  a  loud 
clatter  rubbed  out  the  detested  name,  which  they  wrote 
for  the  purpose  on  pieces  of  wood  or  stone.    The  name9 

1  See  Bertheau  on  Esther  iii.  7.  2  This  is  ingeniously  worked  oul 

by  Ewald,  v.  231. 


Lect.  XLV.  THE  FEAST  OF  PURIM.  199 

of  Hainan's  ten  sons  were  read  in  one  breath,  to  express 
the  exulting  thought  that  they  all  died  in  one  instant.1 
They  were  even  written  in  the  Book  of  Esther  in  three 
perpendicular  lines,  to  signify  that  they  were  hanged 
on  three  parallel  cords.  It  was  added  that  his  seventy 
surviving  sons  fled,  and,  according  to  the  curse  of  the 
109th  Psalm,  begged  their  bread  from  door  to  door.2 
At  the  conclusion  the  whole  congregation  exclaimed : 
"  Cursed  be  Hainan,  blessed  be  Mordecai ;  cursed  be 
•'Zoresh,  blessed  be  Esther;  cursed  be  all  idolaters, 
'  blessed  be  all  Israelites ;  and  blessed  be  Harbonah, 
''  who  hanged  Hainan." 

Such  a  spirit  reminds  one  inevitably  of  the  union  01 
fear  and  cruelty  felt  by  those,  not  alone  of  Jewish  de- 
scent, who  find  themselves  in  foreign  lands  exposed  to 
hostile  populations.  It  is  the  same  sentiment  as  that 
which  caused  the  English  nation  to  cling,  for  so  many 
generations,  to  the  celebration  of  the  deliverance  from 
the  Gunpowder  Plot ;  and,  if  the  Jewish  festival  has 
lasted  longer,  it  is  because  of  the  more  continual  sense 
of  clanger,  and  the  more  indomitable  instinct  of  nation- 
ality. 

It  was  natural  that  a  book  thus  bound  up  with  one 
of  the  strongest  sentiments  of  the  Hebrew  race  should 
have  been  raised  to  a  high  place  in  their  sacred  vol- 
ume. Late  as  its  introduction  was,  it  mounted  up  at 
once,  if  not  to  the  first  rank,  yet  first  amongst  the  sec- 

1  See  Prideaux,  i.  355.  Diet,  of  abandoned  the  anathemas  of  Ortho- 
the  Bible,  "  Esther,"  and  "  Purim."  dox  Sunday,  as   the   Latin  Church 

2  These  violent  expressions  are  has  surrendered  the  detailed  excom- 
now,  I  am  informed,  discontinued  in  munications  of  Holy  Thursday,  a9 
all  the  more  civilized  Jewish  com-  the  English  Church  has  disused  its 
munities,  which  have  gradually  vindictive  political  services,  and,  in 
•iropped  them  out  of  use,  as  the  many  instances,  the  recital  of  tht 
Greek  Church  has,  to  a  large  extent,  Athanasian  Creed. 


200  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

ond.  It  was  believed  that  it  would  outlast  all  the  He- 
The  Rook  brew  Scriptures  except  the  Pentateuch  ;  more 
of  Esther.  precious  than  Prophets,  or  Proverbs,  or  Psalms  ; 
amongst1  the  five  Hagiograpkical  rolls  ("Megilloth"  ) 
it  was  emphatically  "  the  roll,"  "  the  Megillah."  In  the 
Christian  Church  its  fate  has  been  just  the  reverse.  Of 
all  the  Canonical  Books  of  the  Old  Testament  it  is  the 
one  which  lingered  longest  on  the  outskirts,  and  which 
has  provoked  the  most  uneasy  suspicion  since.  Melito 
of  Sardis,  Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  Athanasius  of  Alexan- 
dria hesitated  to  permit  its  reception.  Luther,  even  if 
he  did  not,  as  was  once  commonly  believed,  "  toss  the 
"Book  of  Esther  into  the  Elbe,"  yet  wished  that  "it 
"  did  not  exist,  for  it  hath  too  much  of  Judaism,  and 
"a  great  deal  of  heathenish  naughtiness."2 

These  two  expressions  well  describe  the  natural 
objection  of  the  civilized  —  we  may  acid,  of  the  Chris- 
tian —  conscience,  to  the  Book  of  Esther  and  the  Feast 
of  Purim.  The  exclusive  spirit  which  breathes  through 
them  —  the  wild  passion  of  Esther's  revenge  in  the 
impalement  of  Hainan's  innocent  family  —  are  too 
closely  allied  to  the  fierce  temper  of  Jael  or  of  Jezebel, 
or  of  the  cruel  Queen  of  Xerxes,  whose  name 3  Ames- 
tris  is  perilously  like  that  of  Esther,  to  win  the  favor 
of  the  modern  Jewish,  still  less  the  modern  Christian, 
reader.  And,  yet  further,  it  is  so  entirely  confined 
to    an    earthly  horizon,  that,  alone  of  all   the    sacred 

1  See  Surenkusius'  Mishna,  ii.  Book  of  Esdras.  On  the  other  hand, 
38 7-402.  Sir   W.    Hamilton    (Discussions,   p. 

2  Table-Talk,  clix.  G.  Bondage  of  519)  has  shown  not  less  conclusively 
the  Will  (Works,  iii.  182).  Arch-  that  the  incontestable  expressions  of 
deacon  Hare  conclusively  proved  the  great  Reformer's  aversion  to  the 
(Notes  to  the  Mission  of  the  Com-  Book  of  Esther  are  quite  as  strong 
farter,  ii.  819)  that  what  Luther  as  those  contained  in  the  populai 
il  tossed  into  the  Elbe  "  was  not  the  version  of  his  words. 

Book  of  Esther,  but  the  Apocryphal        8  Herod.,  ix.  108-113. 


Lect.  XLV.  THE   BOOK  OF  ESTHER.  201 

books,  it  never  names  the  name  of  God  from  first  to 
last.  Whether  this  absence  arose  from  that  increasing 
scruple  against  using  the  Divine  Name,  which  we  have 
already  noticed,  or  from  the  instinctive  adoption  ol 
the  fashion  of  the  Persian  Court,  this  abstinence  from 
any  religious  expressions  was  so  startling  that  the 
Greek  translators  thrust  into  the  narrative  long  *  addi- 
tions containing  the  sacred  phrases  which,  in  the 
original  narrative,  were  wanting. 

But  there  is  a  sense  in  which  this  peculiarity  of 
the  Book  of  Esther  is  most  instructive.  Within  that 
Judaic  "hardness  of  heart,"  behind  that  " heathenish 
"  naughtiness,"  burn  a  lofty  independence,  a  genuine 
patriotism,  which  are  not  the  less  to  be  admired  be- 
cause Mordecai  and  Esther  spoke  and  acted  without 
a  single  appeal  by  name  or  profession  to  the  Supreme 
Source  of  that  moral  strength  in  which  they  dared 
the  wrath  of  the  Great  King  and  labored  for  the 
preservation  of  their  countrymen.  It  is  necessary  foi 
us  that  in  the  rest  of  the  sacred  volume  the  name 
of  God  should  constantly  be  brought  before  us,  to 
show  that  He  is  all  in  all  to  our  moral  perfection. 
But  it  is  expedient  for  us  no  less  that  there  should 
be  one  book  which  omits  it  altogether,  to  prevent  us 
from  attaching  to  the  mere  name  a  reverence  which 
belongs  only  to  the  reality.  In  the  mind  of  the  sacred 
writer  the  mere  accidents,  as  they  might  seem,  of  the 
quarrel  of  Ahasuerus,  the  sleepless  night,  the  delay 
of  the  lot,  worked  out  the  Divine  Will  as  completely 
as  the  parting  of  the  Red  Sea  or  the  thunders  of  Sinai. 
The  story  of  Esther,  glorified  by  the  genius  of  Handel 
and    sanctified    by  the    piety  of  Racine,  is   not  only  a 

1  "The  rest  of  the  Book  of  Es-     xiii.  9-18;  xiv.  3-9;  xv.  28;  xvi.  4, 
ther,"  x.   9,  10,  11,  12,  13;  xi.  10;     16. 


202  MAiACHL  Lect.  XLV. 

material  for  the  noblest  and  the  gentlest  of  medita- 
tions, but  a  token  that  in  the  daily  events  —  the  un- 
foreseen chances  —  of  life,  in  little  unremembered  acts, 
in  the  fall  of  a  sparrow,  in  the  earth  bringing  forth 
fruit  of  herself,  God  is  surely  present.  The  name  of 
God  is  not  there,  but  the  work  of  God  is.  Those  who 
most  eagerly  cling  to  the  recognition  of  the  biblical 
authority  of  the  book  ought  the  most  readily  to  be 
warned  by  it  not  to  make  a  man  an  offender  for  a  word 
or  for  the  omission  of  a  word.  When  Esther  nerved 
herself  to  enter,  at  the  risk  of  her  life,  the  presence 
of  Ahasuerus  —  "I  will  go  in  unto  the  King,  and  if 
"  I  perish  I  perish  "  —  when  her  patriotic  feeling 
vented  itself  in  that  noble  cry,  "  How  can  I  endure  to 
"  see  the  evil  that  shall  come  unto  my  people  ?  or  can 
"  I  endure  to  see  the  destruction  of  my  kindred  ?  "  — 
she  expressed,  although  she  never  named  the  name  of 
God,  a  religious  devotion  as  acceptable  to  Him  as  that 
of  Moses  and  David,  who,  no  less  sincerely,  had  the 
sacred  name  always  on  their  lips. 

Esther  is,  in  this  sense,  the  Cordelia  of  the  Bible. 

Thy  youngest  daughter  does  not  love  thee  least, 
Nor  are  those  empty-hearted  whose  low  sounds 
Reverberate  no  hollowness.  .  .  . 

2.  It  remains  for  us  to  ask  the  perplexed  and  per- 
Theinflu-    plexing  question  whether,  behind  the  splendor 

ence  of  .  J- 

Zoroaster,  oi  the  Persian  Court,  and  the  struggle  of  the 
Dispersion  for  existence,  we  can  trace  any  higher  influ- 
ence of  the  Persian  dominion  on  the  Jewish  nation. 
There  is  one  great  religious  name  which,  even  in  the 
less  instructed  days  of  Christendom,  was  always  ac- 
knowledged, with  a  reverential  awe,  as  bound  up  with 
the  beginning  of  sacred  philosophy.  In  Raffaelle'.s 
''  School   of  Athens  "  the  only  Eastern  Sage  admitted 


Lbct.  XLV.  ZOROASTER.  203 

is  Zoroaster  the  Persian.  By  the  theological  inquirers 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  likeness  of  his  theol- 
ogy to  that  of  the  Old  Testament  was  so.  fully  ac- 
knowledged as  to  drive  them  to  the  theory  that  he 
must  have  been  the  pupil  of  Daniel.1  The  research 
of  modern  times  has  dispelled  this  hypothesis,  by  the 
allegation  that  he  and  his  career  preceded  even  the 
earliest  date  of  Daniel  by  centuries,  but  it  has  not 
therefore  dissolved  the  connection  between  Judaism 
and  the  Zendavesta. 

"  Let  us  picture  to  ourselves  "  (we  adopt  the  elo- 
quent words  of  Bunsen)  "  one  of  the  holy  hills  dedi- 
"  cated  to  the  worship  of  fire,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
"  the  primeval  '  city  of  marvels  '  in  Central  Asia  — 
"  Baktra  'the  glorious,'  now  called  Balkh,  i  the  mother 
"  '  of  Cities.'  From  this  height  we  look  down  in  imag- 
"  ination  over  the  elevated  plateau,  which  lies  nearly 
"  2,000  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  sloping  down- 
"  ward  toward  the  north,  and  ending  in  a  sandy  desert, 
•*  which  does  not  even  allow  the  streams  of  Bactria  to 
"  reach  the  neighboring  Oxus.  On  the  southern  hori- 
"  zon  the  last  spurs  of  the  Indian  Caucasus  rear  their 
"lofty  peaks  of  5,000  feet  high.  Out  of  those  hills, 
"  the  Parapomisus,  or  Hinclu-kush,  springs  the  chief 
"river  of  the  country,  the  Bactrus  or  Delias,  which 
"  divides  into  hundreds  of  canals,  making  the  face  of 
"  the  country  one  blooming  garden  of  richest  fruits. 
"  To  this  point  converge  the  caravans,  which  travel 
"  across  the  mountains  to  the  land  of  marvels,  or  bring 

'  treasures  from  thence.  Thither,  fifteen  centuries 
"  before  the  Babylonian  Captivity,  on  occasion  of 
'*  the  peaceful  sacrifice  by  fire,  from  whose  ascending 

'  flame   auguries  were    drawn,  perhaps   also  with   the 

1  Prideaux,  i.  236-257. 


204  MALACHI. 


Lect.  XLV. 


"  customary  interrogation  of  the  earth-oracle  by  means 
"  of  the  sacred  bull,  Zoroaster  or  Zarathustra  had 
"  convened  the  nobles  of  the  land  that  he  might  per- 
"form  a  great  public  religious  act.  Arrived  there, 
"  at  the  head  of  his  disciples,  the  seers  and  preachers, 
"  he  summons  the  Princes  to  draw  nigh  and  to  choose 
"  between  faitli  and  superstition."  1 

He  was  willing  to  retain  those  outward  symbols  of 
adoration,  but  only  as  signs  of  the  worship  of  the 
true  God,  who  is  the  God  of  the  good  and  truth-lov- 
ing, and,  strictly  speaking,  can  be  honored  alone  by 
truthfulness  in  thought,  word,  and  deed,  by  purity  of 
motive,  and  a  strictly  veracious  life.  Accounted  by 
his  contemporaries  a  blasphemer,  atheist,  and  fire- 
brand worthy  of  death;  regarded  even  by  his  own 
adherents  after  some  centuries  as  the  founder  of 
magic,  by  others  as  a  sorcerer  and  deceiver,  he  was 
nevertheless  recognized  already  by  the  earliest  Greek 
philosophers  as  a  spiritual  leader  of  the  primeval  ages 
of  mankind. 

This  identification  of  Truth  with  the  Supreme  Being 
is,  as  it  would  seem,  the  fundamental  article  of  the  Zo- 
roastrian  creed;  dimly  indicated  in  the  veneration  of 
fire  and  of  the  sun,  as  the  emblem  of  the  Divinity; 
practically  enforced  in  the  summary  of  the  moral  edu- 
cation of  the  Persian  youth  :  —  "to  speak  the  truth  ;  " 
reflected  in  the  Jewish  apologue  of  Zerubbabel's  speech 
in  the  Court  of  Persia,2  that  "  truth  is  great  and  shall 
•'prevail."  That  this  creed  should  at  once  have  drawn 
the  conqueror  Cyrus  near  to  his  Jewish  subjects,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  was  inevitable.  Then  comes  the 
confused  story  of  its  admixture  with  the  Magian  system, 

1  Bunsen's  God  in  History,  i.  280-        2  1    Esdr.    iv.    35.     See    Lecture 
WO.  XLIII. 


Lect.  XLV.  ZOROASTER.  205 

and  of  its  temporary  subversion  under  the  domination 
of  that  system  in  the  reign  of  the  usurper  Smerclis.  Nor 
can  it  be  altogether  accidental  that,  when  Da-  Revivaiof 
rius  Hystaspes  overthrew  the  Magians  and  re-  JSmfSa 
established,1  as  he  himself  records,  the  true  Zo- 521' 
roastrian  worship,  the  favor  to  the  Jewish  race  which 
had  been  suspended  during  the  Magian  supremacy  was 
once  more  restored.  And  thus,  although  it  may  be 
that  Zoroaster  himself  lived  long  before,  he 2  rose,  as  it 
were,  from  the  grave,  in  this  middle  period  of  the  Per- 
sian dominion,  with  renewed  force ;  but  yet  with  ele- 
ments which,  if  not  foreign  to  his  original  creed,  were 
strengthened  by  the  Magian  influence  that  henceforth 
colored  it — and  of  which  the  Jewish,  no  less  than  all 
the  surrounding  religions,  felt  the  effect.  "  Magic  "  — 
of  which  the  very  name  dates  from  this  epoch  —  that 
is,  the  belief  in  the  use  of  natural  and  material  objects 
to  control  or  to  supersede  moral  acts  —  entered  from 
henceforth  deeply  into  the  vitals,  if  not  of  Jewish  faith, 
yet  certainly  of  Jewish  practice.  The  veneration  for 
the  holy  fire,  which  was  kindled  from  the  sacred  naph- 
tha fountains  of  Persia  by  the  Caspian  Sea,  penetrated 
into  the  Jewish  traditions  in  the  story  that,  when  Ne- 
hemiah  rekindled  the  consecrated  fire  of  the  Temple 
from  the  stones  of  the  altar,  he  called  it  "  napthar," 
giving  it  a  Hebrew  meaning,  "a  cleansing,"  though 
many  call  it  "nephi."  3 

Although  the  returning  Jews,  as  we  have  seen,  were 
not  influenced    by  the  Persian  repugnance  to  Connection 
temples,  and  strictly  maintained  the  exclusive  Judaism, 
sanctity  for  sacrificial  worship  of  the  sanctuary  at  Jeru- 

1  Behistun     Inscription,    Rawlin-         2  See  Malcolm's  Persia,  i.  58. 
6on's  Herodotus,  App.  to  Book   I.,         8  2   Mace.  i.  36;    Ew^d,  v.  163; 
Essay  v.  Herder,  v.  75. 


206  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

salem,  yet  it  was  in  accordance,  and  probably  through 
contact,  with  the  Persian  system  of  allowing  sacrifice 
to  be  performed  in  all  places  and  on  every  holy  hill 
that  there  sprang  up,  side  by  side  with  the  Temple 
service  of  Jerusalem,  the  more  spiritual  worship  of  the 
synagogue.1  The  Persian  doctrine  of  the  Unity  and  the 
Invisibility  of  the  Divinity,  of  a  celestial  and  infernal 
hierarchy,  which  had  never  before  received,  so  to  speak, 
the  sanction  of  the  Imperial  Powers  of  the  earth,  was 
substantially  the  counterpart  to  the  corresponding  ele- 
ments of  the  Hebrew  faith.  The  conclusion,  therefore. 
is,  that  whilst  these  doctrines  and  practices  sprang  up 
indigenously  in  the  Israel  of  this  period,  from  reasons 
adequate  to  account  for  their  growth  at  this  particular 
juncture,  yet  they  must,  in  all  probability,  have  re- 
ceived an  immense  stimulus  from  the  consciousness 
that  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  vast  neighboring  and 
surrounding  Empire  was  impregnated  with  the  same 
truths.  The  small  band  of  exiles  must,  if  they  were 
not  exempt  altogether  from  the  weakness  and  strength 
of  human  motives,  have  felt  that  their  confident  trust 
in  the  Unity  of  the  Divine  Will,  their  belief  in  the  mul- 
tiplied subordinate  ministers  of  that  Will,  their  intense 
horror  and  gradual  personification  of  the  principle  of 
Moral  Evil,  had  acquired  new  form  and  bone  and  sub- 
stance by  the  sympathy  of  an  older,  vaster  frame  of 
worship,  inspiring  and  encouraging  ideas  which  they 
themselves  had  been  led  to  foster  with  a  new  and  ex- 
clusive zeal.  Even  in  detail  it  is  not  possible  to  avoid 
the  conviction  that  the  mystical  number  of  the  seven 
lamps,  the  seven  watchers  before  the  throne  of  God, 
were  derived  directly  from  the  seven  Amshaspands  ("  the 
"unsleeping  ones"),  who,  like  the  seven    Councillors 

1  Kucnen,  iii.  35.     See  Lecture  XLIV. 


Lect.  xlv.  zoeoastee.  207 

of  the  Persian  King,  encircled  the  presence  of  Ormuzd ; 
and  the  name  of  the  demon  Asmodeus  in  the  Book  of 
Tobit  is  unquestionably  the  Persian  "  Aeshma-Deva,"  * 
the  spirit  of  concupiscence,  who  at  times  rose  to  the 
rank  of  the  Prince  of  Demons. 

But  here  we  must  pause.  Not  only  is  there  no  trace 
of  Ahriman  by  name,  but  the  idea  of  the  separate  co- 
equal existence  of  the  Evil  with  the  Good  Spirit  is  un- 
known to  the  Judaic  creed,  and  even  at  the  very  mo- 
ment of  the  first  contact  between  the  two  systems  the 
Prophet  of  the  Captivity  meets  the  doctrine  of  an 
eternal  Dualism  of  Good  and  Evil  —  so  natural  in  itself, 
and  so  deeply  rooted  in  the  Zoroastrian  theology  —  by 
the  announcement,  as  if  in  express  antithesis  :  "I  form 
"the  light  and  create  darkness.  I  make  peace  and 
"  create  evil.  I  the  Eternal  do  all  these  things."  2  And 
not  only  are  the  "watchers"  the  good  and  evil  spirits 
of  the  Books  of  Daniel,  of  Tobit,  and  of  Enoch  (with 
the  single  exception  of  Asmodeus),  called  by  Hebrew 
not  by  Persian  names,  but  their  functions  are  different 
The  beneficent  "  messengers "  are  far  more  closelv 
bound  up  with  human  joys  and  .sorrows  than  the  hier 
archy  which  fills  the  vacant  space  of  the  Persian  heaven 
and  the  malevolent  accusers  far  more  completely  sub- 
ordinate to  the  overruling  power  of  the  same  Divine 
Master,  to  whom  both  good  and  evil  are  as  ministers.3 

There  is,  in  short  (such  seems  to  be  the  result  of  the 
most  recent4  investigation),  a  close  affinity  between  the 
forms  which  the  two  religions  assumed ;    but  it  is  the 

1  Kuenen,  iii.   40.     Compare   the        3  See    Kalisch's    Commentary,   ii. 
oames  of  the  demons  in  the  Book  of     292-294. 

Enoch,  ch.  6.    Miiller's  Chips  from  a  4  Kuenen,   iii.    85-44;   Ewald,  v. 

German  Workshop,  i.  148.    Kalisch's  184;    Max  Miiller's    Chips  from  a 

Commentary,  i.  310,  311,  316.  German  Workshop,  i.  142-159. 

2  Isa.  xlv.  1-7. 


208  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

affinity  —  with  the  exception  of  a  few  details  —  rather 
of  a  common  atmosphere  of  lofty  truths,  of  a  simulta- 
neous sympathy  in  their  view  of  earthly  and  heavenly 
things,  than  the  affinity  of  direct  lineage  and  disciple- 
ship.1  It  is  a  kinship,  however,  which  did  not  cease  with 
this  period  of  the  Jewish  history.  One  great  doctrine 
which,  though  mainly  fostered  from  another  quarter, 
was  to  be  held  in  unison  by  the  ancient  followers  of  Zo- 
roaster and  the  later  followers  of  Moses  and  of  Isaiah,  is 
yet  to  be  noticed  —  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  One 
vast  influence  the  Persian  religion  was  still  to  exercise,  if 
not  over  the  Jewish  Church  itself,  yet  over  that  which 
sprang  from  its  bosom,  through  the  worship  of  Mithras, 
which  in  the  early  centuries  of  Christendom  was,  partly 
as  an  ally,  partly  as  a  foe,  to  color  the  growth  of  its 
ritual  and  its  creed.  But  this  is  far  in  the  future.  The 
connection  of  Judaism  with  the  faith  of  Zoroaster,  how- 
ever explained,  is  not  without  instruction.  Whatever 
there  be  of  permanent  truth  in  the  substance  of  any  of 
these  beliefs  will  not  lose  in  value  if  it  was  allied  or  be 
even  traced  to  a  religion  so  pure  and  so  venerable  as 
that  of  the  Zenclavesta.  Whatever  there  is  of  transitory 
or  excessive  in  the  forms  of  any  of  these  may  be  the 
more  contentedly  dropped  if  it  can  be  shown  to  be  de- 
rived from  a  faith  which,  however  once  powerful,  now 
lingers  only  in  the  small  sect  of  the  Fire-worshippers 
of  Bombay,  who  alone  carry  on2  the  once  formidable 
name  of  "  Parsee  "  or  "Persian." 

3.  If  the  influence  even  of  Zoroaster  and  Cyrus  on 
Judaism  be  open  to  question,  it  will  not  be  expected 

1  "  The  perms  which  lav  hidden  in  iii.    63.     The    same    view,  substan- 

"  Judaism  were  fertilized  by  contact  tially,   is  maintained    in   Hardwick'fl 

"with  a  religion   in  which   they  had  Christ  and  other  Masters,  545-570. 
"arrived   at   maturity."      Kuenen,         2  See  Muller's  Chips,  i.  1G1. 


Lkct.  XLV.  CONFUCIUS.  209 

that  with  the  remoter  Eastern  regions  any  direct  con- 
nection can  be  discovered.  Once,  and  once  Influence 
only,  in  the  Hebrew  records  we  catch  a  doubt- o£  China- 
ful  glimpse  of  that  strange  race,  which  has  been  elo- 
quently described  to  be  at  the  eastern  extremity  of 
Asia 1  what  Judaea  is  at  the  western,  "  a  people  dwell- 
"  ing  alone  and  not  reckoned  among  the  nations." 
When  the  Evangelical  Prophet  is  calling  the  scattered 
exiles  to  return  from  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  he 
extends  his  cry  even  to  those  that  "  come  from  the  land 
"  of  Sinim."  In  that  solitary  word,2  if  so  be,  the  Em- 
pire of  China  rises  on  the  religious  horizon  of  the  his- 
toric world.  Not  a  vestige  of  its  influence  can  be  traced 
even  on  the  outer  circumference  of  the  theatre  on 
which  the  movement  of  mankind  was  then  advancing. 
Yet,  having  in  view  the  ultimate  scope  of  that  move- 
ment, it  is  impossible  to  learn  without  emotion  that  in 
the  period  which  was  close  within  the  ken  of  the  Prophet 
of  the  Captivity  —  in  the  very  years  in  which  Ezra  was 
preparing  for  his  mission  to  Palestine  —  there  drew  to 
its  close  the  career  of  one  whose  influence  on  his  own 
nation  was  deeper  than  that  of  the  mighty  Scribe.  In 
the  year  478  Confucius 3  died,  himself  the  Ezra  rather 
than  the  Moses  of  his  race ;  "  the  transmitter,  Death  of 

p  •  Confucius, 

"  not  the  maker  of  belief,  born  not  m  posses-  b.  c.  477. 
"  sion  of 4  knowledge,  but  loving  antiquity  and  in  it 
"  seeking  knowledge  —  for  2,000  years  the  supreme 
"  and  undisputed  teacher  of  this  most  populous 5  land  " 
—  and  leaving  a  memory  of  himself  which  is  still  per- 
petuated   even   in   the  very 6   manners,  gestures,  and 

1  Quinet,  Genie  des  Religions,  293.        8  Miiller's  Chips,  i.  311. 

2  Isa.    xlix.    12;    Ewald    doubts,         4  Legge's  Life  of  Confucius,  81 
Sesenius  affirms,  the  identification  of        5  Legge,  95. 

Sinim  with  China.  6  Ed.  Rev.  cxxxix.  315,  316. 

27 


210  MALACHL  Lect.  XLV. 

dress  of  the  Chinese  of  our  day  —  leaving  maxims 
which,  though  stamped  with  that  homely  and  pedes- 
trian character  which  marks  the  whole  religion  of  his 
race,  yet  still  secures  for  him  a  place  amongst  the  per- 
manent teachers  of  mankind.  "  The  superior1  man  is 
"  catholic  and  no  partisan  —  the  mean  man  is  a  par- 
"  tisan  and  not  catholic."  "  It  is  only  the  truly  vir- 
"  tuous  man  who  can  love,  or  who  can  hate  others." 
"  Virtue  is  not  left  alone.2  He  who  practises  it  will 
"  have  neighbors."  "  To  be  able  to  judge  of  others 
"  by  what  is  in  yourselves  may  be  called  the  Art  of 
"  Virtue."  "  When  you  are  laboring  for  others,  labor 
"  with  the  same  zeal  as  if  it  were  for  yourself."  "  The 
"  man  of  perfect  virtue,  wishing  to  be  established  hhn- 
"  self,  seeks  also  to  establish  others  ;  wishing  to  be  en- 
"  largecl  himself,  he  seeks  also  to  enlarge  others."  "  Is 
"  there  one  word  which  may  serve  as  a  rule  for  one's 
"  whole  life  ?  "  "Is  not  Reciprocity  such  a  word  ?  " 
"  What  you  wish  not  to  be  done  to  yourself,  do  not  to 
"  others."  3 

In  those  words  we  cannot  doubt  that  "  an  incense  of 
"  pure  offering  went  up,"  as  Malachi  proclaimed,  "  to 
"  the  Eternal  God  ;  even  from  the  rising  of  the  sun." 
To  ask  how  and  why  the  religion,  the  empire,  the 
morality  of  China  have  not  reached  as  far  as  and  be- 
yond the  level  from  which  they  sprang  would  lead  us 
too  far  away  from  this  period. 

4.  There  was  another  career  }^et  wider  and  nobler 
than  that  of  Confucius  —  unknown  to  him  and 

Influence 

of  India,  unknown  to  Ezra  and  Malachi  —  in  that  vast 
country,  which  also  is  now  for  a  moment,  and  for  the 
first  time,  distinctly  brought  within  the  view  of  the 
Jewish  world,  although   its   products   had   penetrated 

1  Legge,  95.  2  Lcgge,  138.  8  Legge,  226. 


Lect.  XLV.  BUDDHA.  211 

thither  even  in  the  reign  of  Solomon.  "  From  India1 
u  even  to  Ethiopia  "  —  this  was  the  extreme  verge  of 
the  dominion  of  the  Persian  King,  as  it  appears  in  the 
Book  of  Esther,  in  describing  the  struggles  of  the  Per- 
sian Court,  almost  in  the  very  year  in  which,  following 
close  upon  the  death  of  the  great  sage  of  China,  there 
passed  away2  the  yet  greater  sage  of  India,  Sakya 
Muni,  more  commonly  known  as  Buddha,  "  the  Bud- 
"  dha,"  the  Enlightened.     That  extraordinary  Death  of 

.        °    .  .  ,.„        .„.  J    Buddha, 

personage,  whose  history  till  withm  our  own  b.  c.  477. 
generation  was  wrapped  in  uncertainty,  and  whose 
very  existence  was  doubted,  has  suddenly  been  re- 
ceived as  amongst  the  foremost  characters  of  the  world. 
"  I  hesitate 3  not  to  say  that,  with  the  single  exception 
"  of  Christ,  there  is,  amongst  the  founders  of  Religion, 
"  no  figure  purer  or  more  affecting  than  that  of  Bud- 
"  dha.  His  life  is  blameless.  His  constant  heroism 
"  equals  his  conviction ;  and  if  the  theory  which  he  an- 
"  nounces  is  false,  the  personal  example  that  he  gives  is 
"  irreproachable.  He,  is  the  finished  model  of  all  the 
"  virtues  that  he  preaches ;  his  self-denial,  his  charity, 
"  his  unchangeable  sweetness,  do  not  betray  him  for  a 
"  single  moment ;  he  abandons  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
"  nine  the  court  of  his  aged  father  to  make  himself  an 
"  ascetic  —  a  beggar.  He  prepares  in  silence  for  his 
"  doctrine  by  six  years  of  retreat  and  meditation ;  he 
"  propagates  it,  by  the  sole  power  of  argument  and 
"  persuasion,  for  more  than  half  a  century ;  and  when 
"  he  dies,  in  the  arms  of  his  disciples,  it  is  with  the 
"  serenity  of  a  sage,  who  has  done  good  all  his  life, 


1  Esther  i.  1;  viii.  9.  precision,  fixes  it  in  b.  c.  477  {Chips 

8  St.     Hilaire    places     Buddha's  from  a  German  Workshop,  i.  311). 

death  in  b.  c.  543  (Bouddha,  p.  ii.).  8  St.  Hilaire,  Bouddha,  p.  v. 

But    Professor    Miiller,   with    more 


212  MALACHI.  Lect.  XL V. 

li  and  who  has  the  assurance  of  having  found  the 
"  truth." 

Wonderful  as  is  the  appearance  of  so  sacred  a  per- 
son on  the  scene,  it  must  be  confessed  that  even  in  the 
East,  widely  as  his  doctrines  and  institutions  h*tve  been 
spread,  the  impress  of  his  own  character  has  been 
slight,  compared  with  other  founders  of  religious  sys- 
tems, and  certainly  with  that  One  to  whom,  without 
irreverence,  he  has  been  more  than  once  likened  ;  and 
outside  the  sphere  of  his  own  wide  communion  his  in- 
fluence, direct  or  indirect,  is  almost  nothing.  One 
single  Buddhist1  is  known  to  have  travelled  west- 
ward in  ancient  times  —  he  who  in  the  reign  of  Au- 
gustus burned  himself  alive  at  Athens.  It  is  true 
that  Buddha  has  been  canonized  as  a  saint  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  under  the  name2  of  S.  Josa- 
phat ;  but  this  singular  deviation  from  the  exclusive 
rules  of  that  Church  was  the  result  of  one  of  those 
inadvertencies  into  which  the  Church  of  Rome  has  so 
often  fallen  in  directing  the  faith,  of  its  members.  Still, 
it  is  difficult  for  those  who  believe  the  permanent  ele- 
ments of  the  Jewish  and  Christian  religion  to  be  uni- 
versal and  Divine  not  to  hail  these  corresponding 
forms  of  truth  or  goodness  elsewhere,  or  to  recognize 
that  the  mere  appearance  of  such  saintlike  or  godlike 
characters  in  other  parts  of  the  earth,  if  not  directly 
preparing  the  way  for  a  greater  manifestation,  illus- 
trates that  manifestation  by  showing  how  mighty  has 
been  the  witness  borne  to  it  even  under  circumstances 
of  such  discouragement,  and  even  with  effects  inade- 
quate to  their  grandeur. 

5.  But  the  history  that  opens  upon  us  in  the  ensu- 

1  See  the  whole  story  in  Professor        2  Muller,    Chips  from   a    German 
Lightfoot's  On  the  Cobsdans,  155.         Workshop,  iv.  182. 


Lect.  xlv.  the  influence  of  geeece.  213 

ing  struggles  of  the  Jewish  nation  compels  us  to  take 
into  account  another  sphere  of  intellectual  and  The  in- 
moral  influence,  which,  unlike  those  strange  Greece. 
appearances  in  the  far  East,  has  worked  with  direct 
and  potent  energy  on  Judaism  and  Christianity,  and 
been  incorporated  in  some  form  or  other  into  the  es- 
sence of  both. 

We  have  seen  the  results  of  the  contact  of  the  Jewish 
race  with  the  Persian  monarchy  and  the  Persian  relig- 
ion ;  we  have  seen  also  the  rise  of  the  two  greatest 
teachers  of  China  and  India,  who  yet  stand  apart  from 
the  stream  of  historic  movement  of  which  Judaism  was 
the  centre.  We  are  about  to  enter  on  a  blank  of  three 
centuries,  of  which  in  Palestine  we  know  almost  noth- 
ing. We  have  looked  toward  "  the  rising  of  the  sun  " 
and  gathered  what  we  can  of  the  true  incense,  of  the 
pure  offering,  which  went  up  from  thence.  Is  there 
any  like  or  any  greater  accession  of  new  forces  such  as 
the  Prophets  anticipated  to  appear  from  the  "going 
"  down  of  the  sun  ?  "  Hardly,  with  the  exception  of 
those  two  or  three  prophetic  utterances  which  have  al- 
ready been  quoted,  and  which  were  literally  "  before 
"their  time,"  was  any  eye  of  Jud&an  Priest  or  Teacher 
turned  in  that  direction.  If  any  Israelite  or  Syrian 
fooked  over  the  Mediterranean  Sea  from  the  heights  of 
Lebanon,  the  whole  Western  world  seemed  to  him 
summed  up  in  the  one  object  within  his  ken,  the  dis- 
tant range  of  the  island  of  Cyprus  or  Chittim.1  It  may 
be  that  Phoenician  traders  had  brought  back  from  that 
complex  medley  of  seagirt  coasts  and  promontories, 
known  as  the  "  isles  of  the  sea,"  a  few  Ionian  slaves, 
from  whom  the  name  of  Ion  or  Javan  became  familiar 

1  Num.  xxiv.  24;  Isa.  xxiii.  1, 12;  Jer.  ii.  10. 


214  MALACHI.  Lect.  XLV. 

to  Hebrew  ears.1  It  may  be  that  a  few  Jewish  sea- 
men 2  from  Joppa  or  Accho  had  served  in  the  army  of 
the  Great  King  and  shared  the  struggle  in  the  Bay  of 
Salamis.  But  no  voice  yet  reaches  us  from  those  dis- 
tant regions.  Of  the  first  twelve  years  of  the  reign  of 
Xerxes,  so  teeming  with  interest  for  all  the  world  that 
lay  beyond  the  Hellespont,  the  Jewish  account  contains 
not  a  word  to  indicate  aught  that  should  ruffle  the 
splendor  and  frivolity  of  the  Court  of  Susa.  Yet  not 
the  less  the  hour  has  come  when  an  influence  more 
penetrating  than  any  that  we  have  yet  touched  is 
about  to  burst  upon  the  development  of  the  Jewish 
Church.  Already,  at  the  opening  of  this  period,  con- 
temporaneous with  Confucius  and  Buddha  in  China  and 
India,  had  arisen  the  first  fathers  of  Greek  Philos- 
ophy, Pythagoras  and  Xenophanes;  and  Solon.  Al- 
ready the  Jews  must  have  heard  the  first 3  accents  of 
that  Grecian  tongue  which  was  soon  to  take  its  place 
as  the  language  of  their  own  sacred  books,  side  by  side 
with  their  native  Hebrew.  And  now,  at  the  very  same 
date  as  the  last  of  the  Judrean  Prophets,  arose,  if  not 
the  earliest,  yet  the  most  enduring  name  among  the 
Prophets  of  the  European  world. 

Not  by  Eastern  windows  only, 
When  daylight  comes,  conies  in  the  light  ; 

In  front  the  sun  climbs  slow  —  how  slowly  1 
But  Westward  look  —  the  land  is  bright.4 

1  Joel  iv.  6;  Isa.  lxvi.  19;  Ezek.  8  The  earliest  Greek  words  in  the 
xxvii.  13;  Zech.  ix.  13.  Hebrew  Scriptures  are  tbe  names  of 

2  Herod.,  vii.  8,  9.  They  may,  the  musical  instruments  in  Dan.  iii. 
however,  have  been  the  Philistine  7.  But  see  note  at  end  of  Lecture 
occupants    of    Ashdod,    Gaza,    and  XML 

Ashkelon  (Rawlinson).  *  Clough's  Poems,  ii.  195. 


THE 

GRECIAN    PERIOD, 


LECTURE  XL VI.     SOCRATES. -B.  C.  468- 


399. 


AUTHORITIES. 


"  The  Memorabilia  "  of  Xenophon  ;  Plato's  "  Dialogues,"  especially 
the  "  Apologia,"  the  "  Crito,"  and  the  "  Phasdo ;  "  and,  for  the 
modern  illustrations,  the  instructive  chapter  in  the  eighth  vol 
ume  of  G-rote's  "  History  of  Greece,"  and  the  excellent  Intro- 
ductions and  Translations  in  Professor  Jowett's  "  Dialogues  of 
«  Plato." 


THE   GRECIAN   PERIOD. 


LECTURE    XLVI. 

SOCRATES. 

We  have  arrived  at  the  point  when  the  influence 
of  Greece  is  to  make  itself  felt  so  deeply  on  the 
history  both  of  Judaism  and  of  the  religion  which 
sprang  from  Judaism  as  to  compel  us  to  pause  for 
a  time,  in  order  to  bring  clearly  before  our  minds  the 
strong  personality  and  the  quickening  power  of  the 
one  Grecian  character  who,  beyond  dispute,  belongs  to 
the  religious  history  of  all  mankind,  and  whose  ex- 
ample and  teaching  —  unlike  that  of  the  Eastern  sages 
whom  we  have  just  noticed  —  struck  directly  on  the 
heart  and  intellect,  first  of  Hebrew  Palestine,  and 
then  of  Christian  Europe.  The  solemn  pause  at  which 
the  last  utterances  of  Malachi  leave  us  in  Jerusalem 
corresponds,  in  some  respects,  to  the  pause  which  meets 
us  in  Grecian  history  when  we  transport  ourselves  to 
the  same  period  in  Athens.  It  was  not  merely  that  at 
the  close  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  the  long  struggle 
between  the  contending  States  had  just  been  brought 
to  an  end,  but  that  the  eminent  men  who  bore  their 
part  in  it  had  been  themselves  called  away  from  the 
scene.  It  is  the  Grecian  "  Morte  of  heroes."  Every 
one  of  the  great  statesmen  of  Athens  had  passed  away 
by  the  close  of  the  fifth  century  before  the  Christian 


218  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI 

era ;  and  not  the  statesmen  only,  but  the  great  writers 
also,  whose  career  had  run  parallel  to  the  tragedy  of 
actual  life.  Thucydides,  the  grave  recorder  of  the 
age,  had  left  its  exciting  tale  unfinished  in  the  middle 
of  a  sentence.  Euripides,  the  most  philosophical  and 
sceptical  of  the  dramatic  poets,  had  already  met  a  fate 
stranger  than  that  of  his  own  Pentheus  in  the  hunting- 
grounds  of  his  royal  patron  in  Macedonia.  Sophocles, 
in  the  fulness  of  years,  had  been  called  away  from  the 
midst  of  his  labors  and  his  honors  by  an  end  as  peace- 
ful and  as  glorious  as  that  of  his  own  Colonoean  (Edi- 
pus.     One  man  there   still  remained  to  close 

Socrates.  _  . 

this  funeral  procession  —  he  whose  death  alone, 
of  all  the  characters  of  Athenian  history,  is  an  epoch 
in  the  story  not  only  of  Greece  but  of  the  world. 

With  the  mention  of  the  name  of  Socrates  we  seem 
Hisuni-  to  pass  at  once  from  the  student's  chamber 
irersahty.  ^Q  ^ie  walks  of  common  life  —  from  the 
glories  of  Hellenic  heathenism  into  the  sanctities  of 
Biblical  religion.  He,  and  he  alone,  of  the  sons  of 
Javan,  finds  a  place  in  the  Fathers  of  Christian,  as 
well  as  in  the  moralists  of  Pagan  antiquity ;  in  the 
proverbs  of  modern  Europe,  as  well  as  in  the  oracles 
of  classical  Greece.  The  prayer  "  Sancte  Socrates,  ora 
"  pro  nobis,"  by  whomsoever  said,  has  won  a  more 
universal  acceptance  than  that  of  many  a  prayer  ad- 
dressed to  the  dubious  saints  of  the  Byzantine  or  of 
the  Latin  Church.  If  the  canonization  of  Buddha, 
though  formal,  was  the  result  of  inadvertence,  the 
canonization  of  Socrates,  though  informal,  has  been 
almost  accepted.  And  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  his 
career,  and  its  contrasts  and  affinities  with  the  events 
and  characters  of  the  Sacred  History  both  before  and 
after  the  date  of  his  appearance,  make  its  description 


Lbct.  XL VI.  HIS  PUBLIC  LITE.  219 

an  almost  necessary  element  in  the  course  of  the  story 
on  which  we  have  been  hitherto  and  shall  be  hence- 
forth engaged. 

It  is  not  on  the  public  stage  of  Greek  events  that 
Socrates  is  most  familiar  to  us.  Yet  for  that  very 
reason  there  is  a  peculiar  interest  in  first  approaching 
him,  as  in  a  purely  historical  point  of  view  we  must 
approach  him,  on  the  larger  and  more  complex  sphere 
of  war  and  politics.  When  we  meet  such  characters 
at  moments  where  one  least  expects  to  find  them, 
especially  (as  in  this  case)  on  occasions  which  His  public 
illustrate  and  call  forth  some  of  their  most  re- life' 
markable  qualities,  it  is  the  surprise  of  encountering 
a  friend  in  a  strange  country  —  it  is  the  instruction 
of  seeing  a  character  which  we  have  long  known  and 
admired  in  private  put  to  a  public  test,  and  coming 
through  the  trial  triumphantly.  In  the  winter  cam- 
paign at  Poticlsea,  when  the  Athenian  army  was  struck 
down  by  the  severity  of  the  Thracian  frosts,  we  start 
with  a  thrill  of  pleasure  as  we  recognize,  in  the  one 
soldier  whose  spirits  and  strength  continued  unbroken 
by  the  hardship  of  that  northern  climate,  the  iron 
frame  and  constitution  of  the  great  philosopher.  We 
survey  with  renewed  interest  the  confused  flight  from 
the  field  of  Delium,1  when  we  remember  that  from 
that  flight  the  youthful  Xenophon  was  borne  away  on 
the  broad  shoulders  of  his  illustrious  friend.  In  the 
iniquitous  condemnation  of  the  Ten  Generals  —  when 
'<  the  magistrates  were  so  intimidated  by  the  incensed 
'  manifestations  of  the  assembly  that  all  of  them,  ex- 

1  For  every  Englishman  the  plain  perished  there,  with  a  spirit  not  un- 

of  Delium  (now  Delisi)  has  a  melan-  worthy    of    ancient    Greeks    or    of 

choly  interest,  as   the  scene  of  the  Christian  Englishmen,  in  1870. 
death  of  the  young  Englishmen  who 


220  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI 

"  cept  one,  relinquished  their  opposition  and  agreed  to 
"  put  the  question,  that  single  obstinate  officer  whose 
"  refusal  no  menace  could  subdue,  was  a  man  in  whom 
"  an  impregnable  adherence  to  law  and  duty  was  only 
"  one  amongst  many  titles  to  honor.  It  was  the  phi- 
"  losopher  Socrates  —  on  this  trying  occasion,  once 
"  throughout  a  life  of  seventy  years  discharging  a 
"  political  office  among  the  fifty  senators  taken  by  lot 
"  from  his  own  native  district." 1  Once,  or  it  may  be 
twice  again,  was  he  allowed  to  exhibit  to  the  world 
this  instructive  lesson.  Tn  the  Athenian  Reign  of 
Terror,  after  the  oligarchical  revolution  of  Lysander, 
"  pursuant  to  their  general  plan  of  implicating  unwill- 
"  ing  citizens  in  their  misdeeds,  the  Thirty  Tyrants 
"  sent  for  five  citizens  to  the  government-house,  and 
"ordered  them,  with  terrible  menaces,  to  cross  over 
"  to  Salamis,  and  bring  back  as  prisoner  one  of  the 
"  innocent  objects  of  their  resentment.  Four  out  of 
"  the  five  obeyed  :  the  fifth  was  the  philosopher  Socra- 
"  tes,  who  refused  all  concurrence,  and  returned  to  his 
"  own  house."  2 

This  was  the  last  time  that  Socrates  appeared  in  the 
political  transactions  of  the  country,  unless  we  may  be- 
lieve the  later  traditions  which  represent  him  as  present 
at  that  "most  striking  and  tragical  scene,"  when  The- 
ramenes  sprang  on  the  sacred  hearth  of  the  Athenian 
senate-house  for  protection  against  his  murderers,  like 
Joab  at  the  horns  of  the  altar  of  Jerusalem,  or  Onias  in 
the  consecrated  grove  of  Daphne,3  and  when,  as  we  are 
told,  Socrates  and  two  of  his  friends  alone  stood  forward 
to  protect  him,  as  Satyrus,  the  executioner,  dragged 
him  by  main  force  from  the  altar. 

1  Grote's  Greece,  viii.  272.  8  Lectures  XXVI,  XL VIII. 

2  Grote,  viii.  332. 


Lect.  xlvi.  his  personal  character.  221 

Such  was  the  political  life  of  Socrates  —  important  in 
a  high  degree  as  proving  that,  unlike  many  eminent 
teachers,  his  character  stood  the  test  of  public  no  less 
than  of  private  morality  —  as  exemplifying  also  the 
principle  on  which  a  good  man  may  save  the  State  not 
by  going  out  of  his  way  to  seek  for  trials  of  his  strength, 
but  by  being  fully  prepared  to  meet  them  when  they 
come.  Had  nothing  more  been  handed  down  to  us  of 
his  life  than  these  comparatively  trifling  incidents,  we 
should  still  have  dwelt  with  peculiar  pleasure  on  the 
scenes  in  which  his  name  occurs,  as,  in  fact,  amidst 
"  the  naughty  world  "  of  Grecian  politics  we  dwell  on 
"  the  good  deeds  "  of  the  humane  Nicomachus,  or  of  the 
noble  Callicratidas ;  we  should  still  have  desired  to 
know  something  more  of  the  general  character  and 
pursuits  of  so  honest  and  fearless  a  citizen. 

That  desire  is  gratified  almost  beyond  example  in  the 
ancient  world,  by  what  is  left  us  of  the  individual  life 
of  Socrates,  which  even  in  his  own  time  made  him  the 
best  known  Athenian  of  his  clay,  and  in  later  times  has 
so  completely  thrown  his  political  acts  into  the  shade 
that  not  one  in  ten  thousand  of  those  to  whom  his  name 
is  a  household  word  has  any  knowledge  whatever  of 
those  few  passages  in  which  he  crossed  the  path  of  the 
statesman  or  the  soldier. 

It  is  not  often  that  the  personal  appearance  of  a  great 
man  has  been  so  faithfully  preserved.     In  the  His  Per- 

x        •   i      i   •  i  -ii  -1       sonal   ap- 

Jewish  history  we  have  hardly,  except  m  the  pearance. 
case  of  David,  and  perhaps  of  Jeremiah,  been  able  to 
discern  a  single  lineament  or  color  of  outward  form  or 
countenance.  In  the  famous  picture  of  the  School  of 
Athens  we  look  round  on  the  faces  of  the  other  philos- 
ophers, and  detect  them  only  by  their  likeness  to  some 
ideal  model  which  the  painter  has  imagined  to  himself. 


222  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVL 

But  the  Socrates  of  Raffaelle  is  the  true  historical  Soc- 
rates of  Xenophon  and  Aristophanes.  Could  we  trans- 
port ourselves  back  to  the  Athenian  market-place  dur- 
ing the  Peloponnesian  War,  we  should  at  once  recognize 
one  familiar  figure,  standing,  with  uplifted  finger  and 
animated  gesture,  amidst  the  group  of  handsome  youths 
or  aged  sophists,  eager  to  hear,  to  learn,  and  to  refute. 
We  should  see  the  Silenic  features  of  that  memorabL 
countenance  —  the  flat  nose,  the  thick  lips,  the  promi- 
nent eyes  —  the  mark  of  a  thousand  jests  from  friends 
and  foes.  We  should  laugh  at  the  protuberance  of  the 
FalstafF  stomach,  which  no  necessary  hardships,  no  vol- 
untary exercise,  could  bring  down.  We  should  per- 
ceive the  strong-built  frame,  the  full  development  of 
health  and  strength,  which  never  sickened  in  the  winter 
campaign  of  PotidaBa,  nor  yet  in  the  long  plague  and 
stifling  heats  of  the  blockade  of  Athens ;  which  could 
enter  alike  into  the  jovial  revelry  of  the  religious  festi- 
vities of  Xenophon  and  Plato,  or  sustain  the  austerities, 
the  scanty  clothing,  the  naked  feet,  and  the  coarse  fare 
of  his  ordinary  life.  The  strong  common  sense,  the  hu- 
mor, the  courage  of  the  man,  were  conspicuous  at  his 
very  first  outset.  And  every  one  knows  the  story  of 
the  physiognomist,  who  detected  in  his  features  the 
traces  of  that  fiery  temper  which  for  the  most  part  he 
kept  under  severe  control,  but  which,  when  it  did  break 
loose,  is  described  by  those  who  witnessed  it  as  abso- 
lutely terrible,  overleaping  both  in  act  and  language 
every  barrier  of  the  ordinary  decorum  of  Grecian  man- 
ners.1 

But  we  must  go  back  into  his  inner  life,  and  into 
his  earlier  youth,  before  we  can  apprehend  the  feelings 
with  which    the   Athenians   must   have   regarded   this 

1  See  Fragments  of  Arixtoxenus,  27,  28,  as  quoted  by  Grote,  viii.  548. 


Lect.  xlvi.  his  personal  character  223 

strange  apparition  among  them,  and  which  help  us  to 
understand  some  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  teachers 
with  whom  we  have  had  to  deal  in  the  Semitic  world. 
He  was  still  young,  perhaps  still  in  his  father's  work- 
shop, laboring  at  his  group  of  Graces,  and  seeking  in- 
spirations from  the  ancient  founder  of  his  house,  the 
hero-artist  Dseclalus,  when  the  first  intimation  of  his 
mission  dawned  upon  him.  It  is  evident  that  Socrates 
partook  largely  of  that  enthusiastic  temperament  which 
is  so  often  the  basis  of  a  profound  character,  but  which 
is  rarely  united  with  a  mind  so  remarkable  for  its 
healthy  and  vigorous  tone  in  other  respects.  His  com- 
plete abstraction  from  outward  things  reminds  Hls  ab_ 
us  partly  of  the  ecstatic  condition  of  the  He- straction- 
brew  Prophets  or  leaders,  partly  of  some  of  the  great 
scientific  minds,  both  in  ancient  and  modern  times. 
We  have  seen  how  Ezekiel  lay  stretched  out  like  a  dead 
corpse1  for  more  than  a  year,  or  how  Ezra2  sat  crouch- 
ing in  the  court  of  the  Temple  from  dawn  till  evening 
in  his  horror  at  the  violation  of  the  law.  In  like  man- 
ner "  Archimedes  would  forget  to  eat  his  meals  and  re- 
"  quire  compulsion  to  take  him  to  the  bath."  In  such 
a  moment  of  abstraction  it  was  that  he  rushed  out  of 
the  bath  into  the  streets  of  Syracuse,  exclaiming  Eu- 
reka !  Eureka  !  In  such  another  moment  he  fell  a  vic- 
tim to  the  sword  of  the  Roman  soldier,  too  intent  on  his 
problem  to  return  the  answer  which  would  have  saved 
his  life.3  In  such  a  mood  it  was  that  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
sat  half-dressed  on  his  bed  for  many  hours  in  the  day 
while  composing  the  "  Principia."  And  so  we  are  told 
of  Socrates,  that  he  would  suddenly  fall  into   a  rev- 

1  See  Lecture  XL.  Donkin,    in    Smith's    Classical   Bio* 

3  See  Lecture  XLIV.  graphical  Dictionary. 

•  Life  of  Archimedes,  by  Professor 


224  SOCEATES.  Lect.  XLVL 

erie,  and  then  remain  motionless  and  regardless  of  all 
attempts  to  interrupt  or  call  him  away.  On  one  such 
occasion,  when  in  the  camp  at  Potidrea,  he  was  observed 
to  stand  thus  transfixed  at  the  early  dawn  of  a  long 
summer  day.  One  after  another  the  soldiers  gathered 
round  him,  but  he  continued  in  the  same  posture,  un- 
disturbed by  their  astonishment,  or  by  the  noonday 
heat  which  had  begun  to  beat  upon  his  head.  Evening 
drew  on,  and  still  he  was  to  be  seen  in  the  same  posi- 
tion, and  the  inquisitive  Ionians  in  the  camp  took  their 
evening  meal  by  his  side,  and  drew  out  their  pallets 
from  their  tents  to  watch  him.  And  the  cold  dews  of 
the  Thracian  night  came  on,  and  still  he  remained  un- 
moved, till  at  last  the  sun  rose  above  Mount  Athos,  and 
still  found  him  on  the  same  spot  where  he  had  been 
since  the  previous  morning.  Then  at  last  he  started 
from  his  trance,  offered  his  morning  prayer  to  the  Sun- 
god,  and  retired.1 

Abstraction  from  the  outer  world  so  complete  as  this 
ins  "in-  would  of  itself  prepare  us  for  the  extraordi- 
genius."  nary  disclosures  which  he  has  himself  left  of. 
that  "  divine  sign"  which  by  later  writers  was  called 
his  "  dsemon,"  his  "  inspiring  genius,"  but  which  he  him- 
self calls  by  the  simpler  no  me  of  his  prophetic  orsuper- 
natural  "  voice."  It  is  impossible  not  to  be  reminded 
by  it  of  the  language  in  which  the  Hebrew  Prophets, 
both  by  themselves  and  by  the  historians  of  their  race, 
are  said  to  have  heard  in  the  midnight  silence  of  the 
sanctuary,  or  in  the  mountain  cave,  or  on  the  outskirts 
of  the  desert,  the  gentle  "  call,"  the  still  small  whisper, 
the  piercing  cry  of  the  Divine  Word.2  It  recalls  to  us 
'  the  voices  "  by  which  the  Maid  of  Orleans  described 

1  Plato,  Symp.,  175  b,  220  c.  2  1   Sam.  iv.  4,  6,  8,  10;  1  Kings 

xix.  12;  Isa.  xl.  3,  6. 


Lbct.  xlvi.         his  personal  character.  225 

herself  to  be  actuated  in  her  great  task  of  delivering 
France  from  the  English  yoke,  and  to  which,  in  the 
anguish  of  her  last  trial,  she  confidently  appealed 
against  the  judgment  of  Bishop,  Council,  or  Pope. 
As  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  Jewish  seers,  like  Sam- 
uel or  Jeremiah,  or  of  that  French  maiden,  so  in  the 
case  of  Socrates,  this  mysterious  monitor  began  to 
address  him  when  he  was  a  child,  long  before  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  powers  or  the  conception  of  his  mis- 
sion had  been  realized  in  his  mind,  and  continued 
down  to  the  very  close  of  his  life  ;  so  that  even  his 
conduct  on  his  trial  was  distinctly  based  upon  its  inti- 
mations :  — 

"  He  was  accustomed  not  only  to  obey  it  implicitly, 
"  but  to  speak  of  it  publicly  and  familiarly  to  others. 
"  so  that  the  fact  was  well  known  both  to  his  friends 
"and  to  his  enemies.  It  had  always  forbidden  him 
"  to  enter  on  public  life  :  it  forbade  him,  when  the 
"indictment  was  hanging  over  him,  to  take  any 
"  thought  for  a  prepared  defence  :  and  so  completely 
"  did  he  march  with  a  consciousness  of  this  bridle  in 
"  his  mouth,  that  when  he  felt  no  check  he  assumed 
"that  the  turning  which  he  was  about  to  take  was 
"  the  right  one.  Though  his  persuasion  on  the  subject 
"was  unquestionably  sincere,  and  his  obedience  con- 
"  stant  —  yet  he  never  dwelt  upon  it  himself  as  any- 
thing grand,  or  awful,  or  entitling  him  to  peculiar 
ft  deference ;  but  spoke  of  it  often  in  his  usual  strain 
"  of  familiar  playfulness.  To  his  friends  generally  it 
u  seems  to  have  constituted  one  of  his  titles  to  rever- 
'<  ence,  though   neither  Plato   nor  Xenophon    scruple 

''  to   talk  of  it  in  that  jesting  way  which,  doubtless, 

'  they  caught  from  himself."  * 

1  Grote,  viii.  559. 


226  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVL 

Another  mode  which  Socrates  seemed  to  himself  to 
enjoy,  of  intercommunion  with  the  invisible 
1S'  world,  was  by  dreams, —  in  this  respect  also, 
as  even  the  cursory  insight  of  the  Gentiles  remarked, 
resembling  some  of  the  intuitions  of  the  leaders  *  of 
Israel  and  of  the  surrounding  tribes.  "  Often  and 
"  often "  (so  he  related  one  such  instance  in  his  last 
hours)  "  have  I  been  haunted  by  a  vision  in  the  course 
"  of  my  past  life ;  now  coming  in  one  form,  now  in 
"  another,  but  always  with  the  same  words,  —  Socrates! 
"  let  music  be  thy  work  and  labor."  Even  in  his  last 
hours  he  endeavored  literally  to  comply  with  this  in- 
junction by  trying  even  at  that  solemn  moment  to 
versify  the  fables  of  iEsop. 

But  the  most  important  preternatural  influence  — 
The  Oracle  more  important  even  than  the  restraining 
of  Delphi.  voice  0f  nis  familiar  spirit  —  was  that  which 
acted  upon  him,  in  common  with  the  rest  of  his  coun- 
trymen, and  to  which,  owing  to  the  singular  detach- 
ment of  even  the  most  sacred  localities  of  Palestine 
from  Prophetic  influences,  the  Jewish  history  furnishes 
no  parallel  —  the  Oracle  of  Delphi.  Who  that  has  ever 
seen  or  read  of  that  sacred  spot  —  the  twin  cliffs  over- 
hanging the  sloping  terraces  which  descend  to  the  deep 
ravine  of  the  Plistus  —  terraces  now  bare  and  unten- 
anted, but  then  crowned  by  temples,  rising  tier  above 
tier  with  a  magnificence  the  more  striking  from  the 
wild  scenery  around  —  can  fail  to  enter  in  some  degree 
into  the  reverence  paid  to  the  mysterious  utterances 
which  issued  from  beneath  those  venerable  rocks  ?     It 

1   Strabo,  xvi.   710.     See  Lecture  Dan.  ii.   1    (Lecture    XLT.);    Judas 

V.  and   the   vision   in  Job  iv.  13;  Maccabjeus,  2  Mace.  xiv.  11   (Lec- 

conipare   Solomon,  1  Kings  iii.  5,  10  ture  XLVIII.). 
(Lecture  XXVI.);  Nebuchadnezzar, 


Iect.  XLVI.  HIS   CALL.  227 

was  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  sincere  belief  which  the 
Greek  world  reposed  in  the  oracle  that  it  was  consulted 
not  only  for  state  purposes,  but  to  solve  the  perplexity 
which  was  felt  with  regard  to  individual  characters. 
Even  so  late  as  the  time  of  Cicero  this  belief  con- 
tinued. We  are  told  that  when  the  Roman  orator, 
as  a  young  man,  went  to  Rhodes  to  complete  his  edu- 
cation, and  consulted  the  oracle  concerning  his  future 
career,  the  Pythia  advised  him  to  live  for  himself,  and 
not  to  value  the  opinion  of  others  as  his  guide.  "  If 
"this  be  an  invention,"  says  Niebuhr,  in  relating  the 
incident  with  his  usual  liveliness,  "  it  was  certainly 
"  made  by  one  who  saw  very  deep,  and  perceived  the 
"  real  cause  of  all  Cicero's  sufferings.  If  the  Pythia 
"  did  give  such  an  answer,  then  this  is  one  of  the 
"  oracles  which  might  tempt  one  to  believe  in  an  act- 
ual inspiration  of  the  priestess."  This  is  one  in- 
stance, and  assuredly  another  is  the  answer  made  to 
the  faithful  disciple,  who  went  to  inquire  whether  any 
one  was  wiser  than  the  son  of  Sophroniscus.  The 
priestess  replied,  and  Chosrephon  brought  back  the 
reply,  that  Socrates  was  the  wisest  of  men.  It  was 
this  oracle  which  was  the  turning-point  of  the  life  of 
Socrates. 

It  would   be  curious,  had  we  the  materials,  to   de- 
lineate the  struggles  of  that  hour,  to  trace  the 

.  .  &&  '  His  Call. 

homely  common  sense  of  the  young  statuary, 
confounded  by  the  words  of  the  response,  contrary  to 
all  that  he  knew  of  his  own  wisdom,  as  he  then  counted 
wisdom,  yet  backed  by  what  he  believed  to  be  an 
infallible  authority,  and  pressed  upon  him,  doubtless, 
by  all  the  enthusiasm  of  his  ardent  friend.  There  was 
an  anguish  of  distressing  perplexity,  like  that  which 
's  described  at  the  like  crisis  in  the  call  of  some  of  the 


228  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI. 

greatest  of  the  Jewish  Prophets  —  Isaiah,  Jeremiah, 
and  Ezekiel.1  The  Athenian  craftsman  resolved  to  put 
the  oracle  to  test  by  examining  into  the  wisdom  of 
others ;  and  from  this  seemingly  trivial  incident  began 
that  extraordinary  life,  which,  in  its  own  peculiar  vein, 
"  is  without  parallel  among  contemporaries  or  succes- 
"  sors,"  2  although  indirectly  furnishing  and  receiving 
instructive  illustrations  along  the  whole  pathway  of 
the  Jewish  history,  which,  from  its  deeper  seriousness, 
supplies  resemblances  that  in  Grecian  history  would 
be  sought  in  vain. 

He  was  in  middle  age  when  this  call  came  upon  him, 
and  at  once  he  arose  and  followed  it.  From  that  time 
for  thirty  years  he  applied  himself  to  "  the  self-imposed 
"  task  of  teacher,  excluding  all  other  business,  public  or 
"  private,  and  neglecting  all  means  of  fortune."  For 
thirty  years  —  for  those  thirty  years  which  extend 
through  the  whole  period  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  — 
in  the  crowded  streets  and  squares,  when  all  Attica  was 
congregated  within  the  walls  of  Athens  to  escape  the 
Spartan  invasions  —  during  the  horrors  of  the  plague 
—  amidst  the  excitements  of  the  various  vicissitudes  of 
Pylus,  of  Syracuse,  of  the  revolution  of  the  Four  Hun- 
dred, of  the  tyranny  of  the  Thirty,  of  the  restoration 
of  the  democracy,  Socrates  was  ever  at  his  post,  by 
his  presence,  by  his  voice,  by  his  example,  restraining, 
attracting,  repelling  every  class  of  his  excitable  coun- 
trymen :  "  Early  in  the  morning  he  frequented  the 
"  public  walks,  the  gymnasia  for  bodily  training,  and 

"  the  schools  where  youth  were  receiving  instruction  ; 

'he  was  to  be  seen  in   the  market-place  at  the  hour 

1  Isa.  vi.  3-8;  Jer.  i.  6-9;  Ezek.         -  Grote,  viii.  561. 
A.  9;  iii.  3.    See  Lectures  XXXVII. 
151;  XL.  524.  567. 


Lect.  XL VI.  HIS   TEACHING.  229 

"when  it  was  most  crowded,  among  the  booths  and 
"  tables,  where  goods  were  exposed  for  sale  :  his  whole 
"day  was  usually  spent  in  this  public  manner.  He 
"  talked  with  any  one,  young  or  old,  rich  or  poor,  who 
"  sought  to  address  him,  and  in  the  hearing  of  all  who 
"  chose  to  stand  by :  not  only  he  never  either  asked  or 
"  received  any  reward,  but  he  made  no  distinction  of 
"  persons,  never  withheld  his  conversation  from  any 
"  one,  and  talked  upon  the  same  general  topics  to  all." 1 
Under  any  circumstances  such  an  apparition  would 
have  struck  astonishment  into  a  Grecian  city.  All 
other  teachers,  both  before  and  afterward,  "  either 
"  took  money  for  their  lessons,  or  at  least  gave  them 
"  apart  from  the  multitude  in  a  private  house  to  special 
"  pupils,  with  admissions  or  rejections  at  their  own 
"  pleasure."  Plato's  retreat  in  the  consecrated  grove  of 
Academus,  Epicurus  in  his  private  Garden,  the  painted 
Portico  or  cloister  of  Zeno,  the  Peripatetics  of  Aris- 
totle in  the  shaded  walks  round  the  Lycean  sanctuary 
of  Apollo,  all  indicate  the  prevailing  practice.  His  teach_ 
The  philosophy  of  Socrates  alone  was  in  every  ins- 
sense  the  philosophy  of  the  market-place.  Very  rarely 
he  might  be  found  under  the  shade  of  the  plane-tree  2 
or  the  caverned  rocks  of  the  Ilissus,  enjoying  the 
grassy  slope  of  its  banks,  and  the  little  pools  of  water 
that  collect  in  the  corners  of  its  torrent  bed,  and  the 
white  and  purple  flowers  of  its  agnus  castus  shrubs. 
But  ordinarily,  whether  in  the  city,  in  the  dusty  road 
between  the  Long  Walls,  or  in  the  busy  mart  of  Pirseus, 
his  place  was  amongst  men,  in  every  vocation  of  life, 
living  not  for  himself,  but  for  them,  rejecting  all  pay, 
contented  in  poverty.     Whatever  could  be   added   to 

1  Grote,  viii.  554.  spot  described  in  this  dialogue  can 

8  Plato,  Pkcedrus,  c.  9.   The  exact     still  be  verified. 


230  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLV1 

the  singularity  of  this  spectacle  was  added  by  the  sin 
gularity,  as  already  indicated,  of  bis  outward  appear- 
ance. Amidst  the  gay  life,  the  beautiful  forms,  the 
brilliant  colors  of  an  Athenian  multitude  and  an  Athe- 
nian street,  the  repulsive  features,  the  unwieldy  figure, 
the  bare  feet,  the  rough  threadbare  attire  of  the  phi- 
losopher must  have  excited  every  sentiment  of  astonish" 
ment  and  ridicule  which  strong  contrast  can  produce. 
And  if  to  this  we  add  the  occasional  trance,  the  eye 
fixed  on  vacancy,  the  total  abstraction  from  outward 
objects  —  or  again,  the  momentary  outbursts  of  violent 
temper —  or  lastly  (what  we  are  told  at  times  actually 
took  place)  the  sudden  irruptions  of  his  wife  Xanthippe 
to  carry  off  her  eccentric  husband  to  his  forsaken  home 
—  we  shall  not  wonder  at  the  universal  celebrity  which 
he  acquired,  even  irrespectively  of  his  singular  powers 
or  of  his  peculiar  objects.  An  unusual  diction  or  even 
an  unusual  dress  secures  attention  for  a  teacher,  so  soon 
as  he  has  once  secured  a  hearing.  Such  was  the  nat- 
ural effect  of  the  hair-cloth  wrappings,  or  at  times  the 
nudity,  of  the  Jewish  Prophets.  When  Socrates  ap- 
peared, it  was  (so  his  disciples  described  it) l  as  if  one 
of  the  marble  satyrs  which  sat  in  grotesque  attitudes 
with  pipe  or  flute  in  the  sculptors'  shops  at  Athens 
had  left  his  seat  of  stone,  and  walked  into  the  plane- 
tree  avenue  or  the  gymnastic  colonnade.  Gradually 
the  crowd  gathered  round  him.  At  first  he  spoke  of 
the  tanners,  and  the  smiths,  and  the  drovers,  who  were 
plying  their  trades  about  him  ;  and  they  shouted  with 
laughter  as  he  poured  forth  his  homely  jokes.  But 
soon  the  magic  charm  of  his  voice  made  itself  felt. 
The  peculiar  sweetness  of  its  tone  had  an  effect  which 
even  the  thunder  of  Pericles  failed  to  produce.     The 

i  See  Lectures  XIX.,  XXX.,  XXXVH;  Plato.  Symp.,  c.  89. 


Lect.  XL VI.  HIS   TEACHING.  231 

laughter  ceased  —  the  crowd  thickened  —  the  gay 
youth  whom  nothing  else  could  tame  stood  transfixed 
and  awestruck  in  his  presence  ;  there  was  a  solemn 
thrill  in  his  words,  such  as  his  hearers  could  compare  to 
nothing  but  the  mysterious  sensation  produced  by  the 
clash  of  drum  and  cymbal  in  the  worship  of  the  great 
Mother  of  the  Gods  —  the  head  swam,  the  heart  leaped 
at  the  sound  —  tears  rushed  from  their  eyes  ;  and  they 
felt  that  unless  they  tore  themselves  away  from  that 
fascinated  circle,  they  should  sit  down  at  his  feet  and 
grow  old  in  listening  to  the  marvellous  music  of  this 
second  Marsyas. 

But  the  excitement  occasioned  by  his  appearance  was 
increased  tenfold  by  the  purpose  which  he  had  set  be- 
fore him  when,  to  use  the  expressive  comparison  of  his 
pupils,  he  cast  away  his  rough  satyr's  skin  and  dis- 
closed the  divine  image  which  that  rude  exterior  had 
covered.  The  object  to  which  he  thus  devoted  himself 
with  the  zeal  "  not  simply  of  a  philosopher,  but  of 
"  a  religious  missionary  doing  the  work  of  a  philos- 
"  opher,"  was  to  convince  men  of  all  classes,  but  espe- 
cially the  most  distinguished,  that  they  had  the  "  con- 
"  ceit  of  knowledge  without  the  reality." 

"  Should  you  even  now  offer  to  acquit  me  "  (these 
were  his  own  words  in  his  defence  at  his  trial)  "  on 
"  condition  of  my  renouncing  this  duty,  I  should  reply 
"  with  all  respect :  If  you  kill  me  you  will  find  none 
"  other  such.  Men  of  Athens,  I  honor  and  love  you  ; 
"  but  I  shall  obey  God  rather  than  you,  and  while  I 
"  have  life  and  strength  I  shall  never  cease  from  the 
'practice  and  teaching  of  philosophy,  exhorting  any 
"  one  whom  I  meet  after  my  manner,  and  convincing 
'  him,  saying :  '  0  my  friend,  why  do  you,  who  are 
u  a  citizen  of  the  great  and  mighty  and  wise  city  ot 


232  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI. 

"  Athens,  care  so  much  about  laying  up  the  greatest 
"amount  of  money  and  honor  and  reputation,  and  so 
"little  about  wisdom  and  truth  and  the  greatest  im- 
"provement  of  the  soul,  which  you  never  regard' or 
"heed  at  all  ?  " 

"  And  this  I  should  say  to  every  one  whom  I  meet, 
"  young  and  old,  citizen  and  alien,  but  especially  to  the 
"  citizens,  inasmuch  as  they  are  my  brethren.  For 
"  this  is  the  command  of  God,  as  I  would  have  you 
"  know ;  and  I  believe  that  to  this  day  no  greater  good 
"  has  ever  happened  in  the  State  than  my  service  to 
"  God.  For  if  you  kill  me  you  will  not  easily  find  an- 
"  other  like  me,  who,  if  I  may  use  such  a  ludicrous 
"  figure  of  speech,  am  a  sort  of  gadfly,  given  to  the 
"  State  by  God ;  and  the  State  is  like  a  great  and  noble 
"  steed  who  is  tardy  in  his  motions  owing  to  his  very 
"  size,  and  requires  to  be  stirred  into  life.  I  am  that 
"  gadfly  which  God  has  given  the  State,  and  all  day 
"  long  and  in  all  places  am  always  fastening  upon  you, 
"  arousing  and  persuading  and  reproaching  you."  1 

Never  has  the  Socratic  method  of  instruction  been 
described  in  language  so  vivid  and  forcible  as  in  the 
words  of  the  last  and  greatest  historian  of  Greece. 

"  To  him  the  precept  inscribed  in  the  Delphian  tem- 
"ple  —  Know  thyself — was  the  holiest  of  all  texts, 
"which  he  constantly  cited,  and  strenuously  enforced 
"  upon  his  hearers ;  interpreting  it  to  mean,  '  Know 
"  what  sort  of  a  man  thou  art  and  what  are  thy  capaci- 
"  ties  in  reference  to  human  use.'  His  manner  of  en- 
"  forcing  it  was  alike  original  and  effective,  and  though 
u  he  was  dexterous  in  varying  his  topics  and  queries  ac- 
i  cording  to  the  individual  person  with  whom  he  had 
''  to   deal,  it  was  his  first  object  to  bring  the  hearer  to 

1  Jowett's  Plato,  i.  344,  345. 


Lect.  xlvi.  his  mission.  233 

"  take  just  measure  of  his  own  real  knowledge  or  real 
"  ignorance.  To  preach,  to  exhort,  even  to  confute 
"  particular  errors,  appeared  to  Socrates  useless,  so  long 
"  as  the  mind  lay  wrapped  up  in  its  habitual  mist,  or 
"  illusion  of  wisdom ;  such  mist  must  be  dissipated  be- 
"  fore  any  new  light  could  enter.  Accordingly,  the 
"  hearer  being  usually  forward  in  announcing  positive 
"declarations  on  those  general  doctrines,  and  expla- 
"  nations  of  those  terms,  to  which  he  was  most  attached, 
"and  in  which  he  had  the  most  implicit  confidence, 
"  Socrates  took  them  to  pieces,  and  showed  that  they 
"involved  contradiction  and  inconsistency;  professing 
"  himself  to  be  without  any  positive  opinion,  nor  ever 
"  advancing  any  until  the  hearer's  mind  had  undergone 
"  the  proper  purifying  cross-examination."  It  was  this 
"  indirect  and  negative  proceeding,  which,  though  only 
"  a  part  of  the  whole,  stood  out  as  his  most  original  and 
"most  conspicuous  characteristic,  and  determined  his 
"  reputation  with  a  large  number  of  persons  who  took 
"  no  trouble  to  know  anything  else  about  him.  It  was 
"  an  exposure  no  less  painful  than  surprising  to  the 
"  person  questioned,  and  produced  upon  several  of  them 
"  an  effect  of  permanent  alienation,  so  that  they  nevei 
"  came  near  him  again,  but  reverted  to  their  former 
"  state  of  mind,  without  any  permanent  change.  But, 
"  on  the  other  hand,  the  ingenuity  and  novelty  of  the 
"  process  were  highly  interesting  to  hearers,  especially 
"  youthful  hearers,  sons  of  rich  men,  and  enjoying  leis- 
•  ure,  who  not  only  carried  away  with  them  a  lofty 
'admiration  of  Socrates,  but  were  fond  of  trying  to 
'■  copy  his  negative  polemics.  His  constant  habit  of 
"never  suffering  a  general  term  to  remain  undeter- 
"  mined,  but  applying  it  at  once  to  particulars  —  the 
'  homely  and   effective   instances   of  which   he   made 


234  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI 

"  choice  —  the  string  of  interrogatories,  each  advancing 
"  toward  a  result,  yet  a  result  not  foreseen  by  any  one 
"  —  the  indirect  and  circuitous  manner  whereby  the 
"  subject  was  turned  round  and  at  last  approached  and 
"  laid  open  by  a  totally  different  face  —  all  this  consti- 
"  tuted  a  sort  of  prerogative  in  Socrates,  wdiich  no  one 
"  else  seems  to  have  approached.  What  is  termed  his 
"  irony  —  or.  assumption  of  the  character  of  an  ignorant 
"  learner  asking  information  from  one  who  knew  better 
'<  than  himself —  while  it  was  essential  as  an  excuse  for 
"  his  practice  as  a  questioner,  contributed  also  to  add 
"  zest  and  novelty  to  his  conversation ;  and  totally  ban- 
"  ished  from  it  both  didactic  pedantry  and  seeming  bias 
"  as  an  advocate,  which,  to  one  who  talked  so  much, 
"  was  of  no  small  advantage." 1 

That  a  life  of  thirty  years  so  spent  should  have 
created  animosities  similar  to  those  excited  at  Jerusalem 
against  Jeremiah,  and  at  times  Isaiah2  —  that  the 
statesmen,  poets,  and  lawyers  should  have  thought  him 
insufferably  vexatious — that  "the  Sophists,"  like  the 
Priests  and  hired  Prophets,  should  have  hated  the  man 
whose  disinterested  pursuance  of  his  vocation  without 
pay  seemed  to  cast  a  slur  upon  their  profession  —  that 
the  multitude  should  have  regarded,  partly  with  dis- 
like, partly  with  awe,  a  man  whose  aims  were  so  lofty, 
whose  life  was  so  pure,  and  yet  whose  strange  behav- 
ior seemed  to  indicate  something  wild  and  preternat- 
ural, was  only  too  obvious;  and  we  cannot  be  surprised 
that,  "  so  violent  was  the  enmity  which  he  occasionally 
"  provoked,  that  there  were  instances  in  which  he  was 
*  struck  or  maltreated,  and  very  frequently  laughed  to 


>  Grote,  viii.  605.  2  Lecture   XXXVII.    449  ;     XL. 

519-522. 


Lect.  xlvi.  his  mission.  235 

"  In  truth,  the  mission  of  Socrates,  as  he  himself  de- 
"  scribes  it,  could  not  but  prove  eminently  unpopular 
"  and  obnoxious.  To  convince  a  man  that —  of  matters 
"which  he  felt  confident  of  knowing,  and  had  never 
"  thought  of  questioning  or  even  of  studying  —  he  is 
"  really  profoundly  ignorant,  insomuch  that  he  cannot 
"  reply  to  a  few  pertinent  queries  without  involving  him- 
"  self  in  flagrant  contradictions,  is  an  operation  highly 
"  salutary,  often  necessary  to  his  future  improvement 
"  but  an  operation  of  painful  surgery,  in  which,  indeed 
"  the  temporary  pain  experienced  is  one  of  the  condi 
"tions  most  indispensable  to  the  future  beneficial  re 
"  suits.  It  is  one  which  few  men  can  endure  without 
"  hating  the  operator  at  the  time  ;  although,  doubtless, 
"such  hatred  would  not  only  disappear,  but  be  ex- 
'  changed  for  esteem  and  admiration,  if  they  perse- 
"  vered  until  the  full  ulterior  consequences  of  the  oper- 
"  ation  developed  themselves.  But  we  know  (from 
"  the  express  statement  of  Xenophon)  that  many  who 
"  underwent  this  first  pungent  thrust  of  his  dialectics, 
"  never  came  near  him  again ;  he  disregarded  them 
"  as  laggards,  but  their  voices  did  not  the  less  count 

no  / 

"in  the  hostile  chorus.  What  made  that  chorus  the 
"  more  formidable,  was  the  high  quality  and  position  of 
"its  leaders.  For  Socrates  himself  tells  us  that  the 
"men  whom  he  chiefly  and  expressly  sought  out  to 
"  cross-examine  were  the  men  of  celebrity,  as  states- 
"  men,  rhetors,  poets,  or  artisans ;  those,  at  once,  most 
"  sensitive  to  such  humiliation,  and  most  capable  of 
'"'making  their  enmity  effective."1 

We  may  wonder,  not  that  the  thirty  years'  "  public. 
'* notorious,   and   efficacious    discoursing"   was 

'  -,     ,  i  •  •  His  fall. 

finally  interrupted,  but  that  it  was  not  inter- 
rupted long  before. 

1  Grote.  vjii.  634. 


236  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLV1 

Why,  then,  it  may  be   asked,  did  he  fall  at  last? 
Why  should  he  have  been  prosecuted  at  seventy  years 
of  age  for  persevering  in  an  occupation  precisely  the 
same  in  manner  and  in  substance  as  he  had  followed  for 
so  many  years  preceding  ?    The  answer  is  to  be  found 
in  the  general  history  of  Athens  at  that  time,  and  the 
general  character  of  the  Athenian  people ;  but  it  is  of 
such  universal  application  that  it  deserves  record  in  its 
connection  with  the  triumphs  and  defeats  of  the  truth 
everywhere  in  Palestine  and  in  modern  Europe  as  well 
as  in  Greece.     It  was  the  moment  of  a  strong  reaction. 
The  most  galling  tyranny  to  which  Athens  had  ever 
been  exposed  had  just  been  overthrown.    A  restoration 
of  the  old  democracy  had  just  been  effected,  under  cir- 
cumstances singularly  trying;    and  in  the  jubilee   of 
that  restoration  the  whole  people  of  Athens  were  en- 
tirely  absorbed.     Every  association  with  the  dreadful 
period  of  the  eight  months'  dominion  of  the  Thirty  was 
now  viewed  with  the  darkest  suspicion.     Every  old  in- 
stitution was  now  cherished  with  double  affection,  re- 
minding  them,  as  it  did,  of  the  free  and  happy  days 
which    those    eight   months   had    suspended,    securing 
them,  as  it  did,  from  the  return  of  the  lawless  cruelty 
and   self-indulgence  which  had  been  established  in  the 
interval.     All    the    suspicions    and    excitements  which 
Thucydides  describes,  with  a  master  hand,  as  the  result 
of  the  mere  traditional  recollections  of  the  tyranny  of 
the  Pisistratides,  were  now  let  loose  with  so  much  the 
greater  force  from  the  freshness  of  the  recollections  of 
the  tyranny  of  Critias  and  his  associates.     All  the  un- 
defined, mysterious  panic  which   ran  through  the  city 
after  the  mutilation  of  the  Hermes-busts  was  now,  al- 
though in  a  less  concentrated  form,  afloat  again  to  vin- 
dicate the  majesty  of  the  ancient  institutions  of  their 


Lect.  XL VI.  HIS   TRIAL.  237 

forefathers  so  unexpectedly,  so  providentially  restored 
to  them. 

It  was  in  this  state  of  public  feeling  that  on  the  walls 
of  the  portico  of  the  King  Archon  —  that  an- 

•  n  ?  i-ii  His  trial. 

cient  vestige  of  primaeval  usage,  which  long 
preserved  at  Athens  the  recollection  of  the  Gate  of 
Judgment,  in  which  the  Kings  of  the  East  have  admin- 
istered justice,  from  David  and  Solomon  down  to  the 
Sublime  Porte  at  Constantinople  and  La  Torre  de  Jus- 
ticia  in  the  Alhambra  —  there  appeared  in  the  presence 
of  the  Athenian  people  the  fatal  indictment,  memorable 
for  all  future  ages  :  "  Socrates  is  guilty  of  crime,  first, 
"  for  not  worshipping  the  gods  whom  the  city  worships, 
"  but  introducing  new  divinities  of  his  own ;  next,  for 
"corrupting  the  youth.  The  penalty  due  is  —  death." 
These  two  accusations  at  once  concentrated  upon 
Socrates  the  indefinite  odium  which  had,  perhaps  for 
years,  but  certainly  for  months  past,  been  gathering  in 
the  minds  of  the  people.  Three  men  only  had  spoken, 
Melitus,  Anytus,  and  Lycon ;  but  they  spoke  the  feel- 
ings of  hundreds.  The  charge  of  innovation  on  the 
national  religion,  as  it  was  one  which,  especially  at 
that  moment,  roused  the  "  too  much  superstition " * 
of  that  sensitive  populace  almost  to  madness,  was  one 
to  which,  however  unjustly,  his  manner  and  his  con- 
versation eminently  exposed  him.  It  recalled,  too,  and 
Melitus  the  poet  would  not  suffer  the  recollection  to 
sleep,  the  great  spectacle  which  twenty-four  years  ago 
had  been  exhibited  in  the  Dionysiac  Theatre,  when 
Socrates  had  been  held  up  to  ridicule  and  detestation 
as  the  representative  of  the  Sophist  school  in  the 
u  Clouds "  of  Aristophanes  ;  and  although  many  who 
aad  sat  on  the  tiers  of  the  theatre  at  that  time  were 

1  Ants  xvii.  22  (Greek). 


238  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVL 

now  in  their  graves,  and,  possibly,  the  long  and  blame- 
less course  which  had  followed  might  have  cleared 
away  some  misunderstandings,  yet  the  very  appear- 
ance of  Socrates  would  suggest  the  laughter  which 
that  hideous  mask  had  called  forth  ;  the  very  words 
of  the  charge  would  bring  before  their  minds  the  most 
striking  of  the  Aristophanic  scenes. 

Still  more  sharply  was  the  second  count  in  the  in- 
dictment pointed  by  the  events  of  the  time  — "  He 
"  has  corrupted  the  youth."  Two  men,  the  most  dis- 
tinguished of  the  pupils  of  his  earlier  years,  had  just 
been  cut  off,  in  the  very  height  of  their  fame  and 
of  their  crimes.  The  two  most  hateful  names  at 
Athens  at  this  moment  were  Alcibiades  and  Critias  — 
Alcibiades,  both  for  his  individual  licentiousness  and 
insolence,  and  also  for  the  public  treason,  which  more 
than  any  one  cause  had  precipitated  the  fatal  termina- 
tion of  the  war  —  Critias,  as  "  the  chief  director  of  the 
"  spoliations  and  atrocities  committed  by  the  Thirty." 
And  yet  both  these  dreadful  characters  —  for  so  they 
must  have  been  regarded  —  had  in  former  times  been 
seen  hanging  on  the  lips  of  Socrates  in  public  and 
\n  private ;  for  Alcibiades  his  affection  had  been 
stronger  than  he  had  felt  to  any  other  man ;  of  Critias 
it  was  enough  to  say  that  he  was  the  uncle  of  the 
philosopher's  most  admiring  disciple,  Plato.  And  the 
odium  which  would  be  incurred  by  this  connection 
must  have  been  enhanced  by  the  presence  of  his  ac- 
cuser Anytus.  Anytus  had  suffered  with  Thrasybulus 
during  the  late  usurpation  —  with  him  had  taken  ref- 
uge in  the  mountain  fastnesses  of  Phyle  —  with  him 
had  shared  the  danger  and  the  glory  of  the  return. 
As  the  aged  accuser  and  the  aged  plaintiff  stood  be- 
fore the  Athenian   court,  the  judges  could  hardly  fail 


Lbct.  XL VI.  HIS   TRIAL.  239 

to  be  reminded  that  in  one  they  saw  the  faithful  sup- 
porter, through  evil  report  and  good  report,  of  their 
greatest  benefactor  —  in  the  other,  the  master  and 
friend  of  the  arch-traitor  and  the  arch-tyrant. 

It  was  to  feelings  such  as  these,  added  to  the  long 
accumulated  jealousy  and  suspicion  which  intellectual 
and  moral  eminence,  when  accompanied  either  by 
eccentricity  or  by  hostility  to  existing  opinions  or 
practice,  always  provokes,  that  we  must  ascribe  the 
unfavorable  attitude  assumed  by  the  Judicial  Assembly 
of  Athens  toward  Socrates.  Amongst  the  five  hun- 
dred and  fifty  men  of  whom  that  assembly  was  com- 
posed there  must  have  been  ample  room  ibr  the  en- 
trance of  all  those  irregular  and  accidental  influences 
to  which  a  numerous  court  of  justice  in  such  a  case 
must  always  be  exposed  —  there  must  have  been  many 
who  had  formerly  smarted  under  his  questions  in 
the  market-place — many  who  had  been  disturbed  by 
the  consciousness  of  something  beyond  their  ordinary 
powers  of  understanding  or  appreciation. 

It  is  due  alike  to  him  and  to  them  to  remember  that 
by  276  out  of  that  number  he  was  acquitted.  A  ma- 
'ority  of  six  turned  the  scale  in  the  most  momentous 
trial  which  down  to  that  time  the  world  had  witnessed. 
There  was  still,  however,  a  chance  of  escape.  The 
penalty  for  which  the  Athenians  had  called  was  death. 
But,  according  to  the  form  of  the  Athenian  judicature, 
it  was  always  in  the  power  of  the  accused,  after  the 
verdict  had  been  pronounced,  to  suggest  some  lesser 
penalty  than  had  been  proposed,  such  as  fine,  impris- 
onment, or  exile.  Had  Socrates  done  this  simply  and 
purely,  the  very  small  majority  by  which  the  condem- 
nation had  been  pronounced  affords  sufficient  proof 
that   the    judges   were    not   inclined   to   sanction   the 


240  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI. 

extreme  penalty  against  him.  But  the  lofty  tone 
which  he  had  assumed  in  the  previous  part  of  the  trial, 
and  which  to  many  of  the  judges  "  would  appear  to 
"  betray  an  insolence  not  without  analogy  to  Alcibiades 
"  or  Critias,  with  whom  his  accuser  had  compared 
"  him "  now  rose  to  a  still  higher  pitch.  His  own 
words  must  be  given,  as  alone  conveying  an  impres- 
sion of  the  effect  which  must  have  been  produced. 

"  And  what  shall  I  propose  on  my  part,  0  men  of 
"  Athens  ?  Clearly  that  which  is  my  due.  And  what 
"  is  that  which  I  ought  to  pay  or  to  receive  ?  What 
"  shall  be  done  to  the  man  who  has  never  had  the  wit 
"  to  be  idle  during  his  whole  life  ;  but  has  been  care- 
"less  of  what  the  many  care  about — wealth  and  family 
"interests,  and  military  offices,  and  speaking  in  the 
"  assembly,  and  magistracies,  and  plots,  and  parties  ? 
"  Reflecting  that  I  was  really  too  honest  a  man  to 
"  follow  in  this  way  and  live,  I  did  not  go  where  I 
"  could  do  no  good  to  you  or  to  myself ;  but  where  I 
"  could  do  the  greatest  good  privately  to  every  one 
"  of  you,  thither  I  went,  and  sought  to  persuade  every 
"  man  among  you  that  he  must  look  to  himself,  and 
"  seek  virtue  and  wisdom  before  he  looks  to  his  private 
"  interests  and  look  to  the  State  before  he  looks  to  the 
"  interests  of  the  State ;  and  that  this  should  be  the  or- 
"  der  which  he  observes  in  all  his  actions.  What  shall 
"  be  done  to  such  an  one  ?  Doubtless  some  good  thing, 
w  0  men  of  Athens,  if  he  has  his  reward ;  and  the  good 

'  should  be  of  a  kind  suitable  to  him.  What  would  be 
"  a  reward  suitable  to  a  poor  man  who  is  your  bene- 
u  factor,  who  desires  leisure  that  he  may  instruct  you  ? 
''  There  can  be  no  more  fitting  reward  than  mainten- 

'  ance  at  the  expense  of  the  State  in  the  Prytaneum." 
It   is   easy  to    conceive    the    indignation  with  which 


Lect.  XL VI.  HIS   DEATH.  241 

this  challenge  must  have  been  received  by  the  judges, 
as  a  direct  insult  to  the  court  —  the  bitter  grief  and 
disappointment  with  which  it  must  have  been  heard 
by  his  friends,  as  throwing  away  the  last  chance  of 
preserving  a  life  to  them  so  inestimably  precious.  To 
us,  it  invests  the  character  of  Socrates  with  that  heroic 
dignity  which  would  else  perhaps  have  been  wanting 
to  his  career,  from  its  very  simplicity  and  homely 
usefulness.  At  the  same  time  it  has  a  further  and 
peculiar  interest  in  enabling  us  to  form  a  distinct 
conception  of  that  determined  disregard  of  time  and 
place  and  consequences  which  constitutes  so  remark- 
able a  feature  of  Socrates'  individual  character,  and 
harmonizes  completely  with  that  stern  religious  de- 
termination which  recalls  and  illustrates  so  many  a 
solitary  career  in  the  history  we  have  traversed  from 
Moses  down  to  Malachi.  It  is  the  same  intent  devo- 
tion to  his  one  object  of  life,  as  appeared  when  he 
remained  transfixed  in  the  camp  at  Potidaea  —  as  when 
he  looked  back  with  calm  majesty  on  his  pursuers  at 
Delium  —  as  when  he  argued  through  long  days  and 
months  in  the  public  places  of  Athens  —  as  when  he 
refused  in  the  raging  assembly  after  the  battle  of 
Arginusaa  to  be  turned  one  hair's  breadth  from  the 
strict  rule  of  law  and  duty. 

The  closing  scenes  which  Plato  has  invested  with 
such  immortal  glory  can  never  be  forgotten.  ffig  death 
The  Hebrew  prophet,  the  Christian  martyr, 
might  well  have  couched  their  farewells  to  the  audi- 
ences before  which  they,  like  him,  often  pleaded  in 
vain,  almost  in  the  same  words  :  "  The  hour  of  depart- 
"  ure  has  arrived,  and  we  go  our  ways.  I  go  to  die, 
-'  and  you  to  live.  Which  is  better  God  only  knows." 
Then    ensue    the   long    thirty    days    which   passed   in 

31 


242  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLV1. 

prison  before  the  execution  of  the  verdict  —  the  play- 
ful equanimity  and  unabated  interest  in  his  habitual  ob- 
jects of  life  amidst  the  uncontrollable  emotions  of  his 
companions,  after  they  knew  of  the  return  of  the  sacred 
ship,  whose  absence  had  up  to  that  moment  suspended 
his  fate.  Then  follows  the  gathering  in  of  that  solemn 
evening,  when  the  fading  of  the  sunset  in  all  its  variety 
of  hues  on  the  tops  of  the  Athenian  hills  was  the  signal, 
that  the  last  hour  was  at  hand.1  Then  the  fatal  hem- 
lock enters  ;  we  see  the  immovable  countenance,  the 
firm  hand,  the  wonted  "  scowl  "  of  stern  defiance  at  the 
executioner  ; 2  we  hear  the  burst  of  frantic  lamentation 
from  all  his  friends,  as,  with  his  habitual  "  ease  and 
"  cheerfulness,"  he  drained  the  cup  to  its  dregs  ; 3  we 
watch  the  solemn  silence  enjoined  by  himself —  the 
pacing  to  and  fro  —  the  cold  pals}^  of  the  hemlock 
creeping  from  the  extremities  to  the  heart,  and  the 
gradual  torpor  ending  in  death. 

We  trace  also  how  he  chose,  or  how  his  disciple  has 
chosen  for  him,  these  last  moments  for  some  of  his 
most  characteristic  arguments.  Now  comes  out  his 
ruling  passion  strong  in  death  suggesting  to  him  the 
consolation,  as  natural  to  him  as  it  seems  strange  to  us, 
that  when  in  the  world  beyond  the  grave  he  should,  as 
he  hoped,  encounter  the  heroes  of  the  Trojan  war  he 
should  then  "  pursue  with  them  the  business  of  mil- 
"  tual  cross-examination,  and  debate  on  ethical  prog- 
ress and  perfection" — how  he  confidently  (as  the 
"  event  proved,  mistakenly  in  the  letter,  truly  in  the 
'*  spirit)  predicted  that  his  removal  would  be  the  signal 

1    a\\'  olfiai    6Ti   ¥i\wv   efoai    in\   ruts  "  Sxnrep    eli&6ei,    Tavpr)$bi>    viroPhtyas. 

\f>tffi    Kai    otjnw    SeSvKtvai.      Phccdo,    C.      lb.  b.   117. 

,16.  8  /J.d\a    evxef'ws    Ka\     e\n6\a>s     i^xt*. 

lb.  ell.  117. 


Lect.  XL VI.  HIS   RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER.  243 

"  for  numerous  apostles  putting  forth  with  increased 
"  energy  that  process  of  interrogatory  test  and  spur  to 
"  which  he  had  devoted  his  life,  and  was  doubtless  to 
"  him  far  clearer  and  more  sacred  than  his  life  "  —  how 
his  escape  from  prison  was  only  prevented  by  his  own 
decided  refusal  to  become  a  "  party  in  any  breach  of 
"the  law  "  —  how  deliberately,  and  with  matter  of  fact 
precision,  he  satisfied  himself  with  the  result  of  the 
verdict,  by  reflecting  that  the  Divine  voice  of  his  earlier 
years  had  "  never  manifested  itself  once  to  him  during 
"  the  whole  day  of  the  trial ;  neither  when  he  came 
"  thither  at  first  nor  at  any  one  point  during  his  whole 
"  discourse  "  —  how  his  "  strong  religious  persuasions 
"  were  attested  by  his  last  words  addressed  to  his  friend 
"  immediately  before  he  passed  into  a  state  of  insensi- 
"  bility  : "  "  Crito,  I  owe  a  cock  to  /Esculapius  ;  will 
"  you  remember  to  pay  the  debt?  " 

Perhaps  in  the  powerful  modern  narrative  of  the 
career  of  Socrates  —  perhaps  in  our  own  as  His  reiig- 
condensed  from  it  —  the  readers  of  ancient  acter. 
history,  as  it  has  hitherto  been  familiar  to  us,  will  have 
felt  something  like  a  jar  against  the  solemn  and  ma- 
jestic associations  with  which  the  life  and  death  of 
Socrates  have  always  been  invested.  To  a  large  ex- 
tent this  is  merely  the  inevitable  result  of  the  sudden 
exhibition,  in  its  true  historical  light,  of  a  great  char- 
acter usually  regarded  with  almost  ideal  indistinctness. 
It  is  very  seldom  that  the  first  sight  of  an  eminent 
man  exactly  corresponds  to  our  preconceived  impres- 
sion ;  and  the  disturbance  of  that  impression,  especially 
if  the  impression  is  tinged  by  moral  or  religious  awe, 
has  the  effect  of  disappointment  and  depreciation  be- 
yond what  is  justified  by  the  facts  of  the  case.  It  is 
for  this  reason,  amongst  others,  that  it  has  been  thought 


244  SOCRATES.  LEcr.  XLVL 

good  to  introduce  at  length  the  contemplation  of  the 
whole  historical  position  of  Socrates:  It  illustrates 
precisely  the  like  difficulty  which  we  experience  in 
dealing  with  the  characters  of  the  vet  more  consecrated 
story  of  the  Jewish  sages  and  prophets.  But  on  second 
thoughts  we  shall  recognize,  as  in  other  matters,  so 
in  this,  that  truth  and  reality,  so  far  from  being  in- 
consistent with  a  just  reverence,  tend  to  promote  it. 
The  searching  analysis  of  the  modern  English  scholar 
has  taught  us  more  exactly  wherein  the  greatness  of 
Socrates  consisted,  and  we  are  therefore  the  better  able 
truly  to  honor,  and,  so  far  as  in  us  lies,  to  imitate  it. 
We  know  better  than  we  did  wherein  \&y  the  true 
secret  of  his  condemnation,  and  we  are  therefore  the 
better  able  not  merely  to  compassionate,  but  to  take 
warning  by  the  error  of  his  judges. 

We  have  pointed  out  in  the  story  of  "  the  wisest  of 
"  Greeks  "  how  curiously  his  claims,  his  expressions, 
even  his  external  mode  of  life  illustrate,  and  are  in  turn 
illustrated  by,  the  utterances  and  acts  of  the  Hebrew 
seers.  But  there  is  yet  more  than  this.  As  in  the  case 
of  David  and  Jeremiah,  we  have  felt  ourselves  entitled 
to  see  the  forecasting* —  the  preludings — of  that  su- 
preme event  which  gives  to  the  earlier  Jewish  history 
its  universal  interest,  so,  in  the  case  of  Socrates,  it  is 
not  less  remarkable  to  trace  the  resemblances  which 
bring  that  final  consummation  of  the  Jewish  history 
into  connection  with  that  Western  World  for  which  the 
great  Prophet  of  the  Captivity  already  had  antici- 
pated so  important  a  part 1  in  the  fortunes  of  his  own 
race. 

In  studying  the  character  and  life  of  Socrates,  we 
know  that  we  are  contemplating  the  most  remarkable 

1  See  Lectures  XL.  and  XLI. 


Lect.  XL VI.     LIKENESS   TO   CHRISTIAN  HISTORY.  245 

moral  phenomenon  in  the  ancient  world  ;  we  are  con- 
scious of  having  climbed  the  highest  point  Likeness 
of  the  ascent  of  Gentile  virtue  and  wisdom;  christian 
we  find  ourselves  in  a  presence  which  invests  Histoir- 
with  a  sacred  awe  its  whole  surroundings.  We  feel  that 
here  alone,  or  almost  alone,  in  the  Grecian  world,  we 
are  breathing  an  atmosphere,  not  merely  moral,  but  re- 
ligious, not  merely  religious  (it  may  be  a  strong  ex- 
pression, yet  we  are  borne  out  by  the  authority  of  the 
earliest  Fathers  of  the  Church),  but  Christian.  Dif- 
ficult as  it  was  to  escape  from  these  associations  under 
any  circumstances,  the  language  of  the  latest  Greek 
historian  has  now  rendered  it  all  but  impossible.  The 
startling  phrases  which  he  uses,  as  alone  adequate  to 
the  occasion,  are  dictated  by  the  necessity  of  the  case  ; 
and  when  we  are  told  that  Socrates  was  a  "  cross-ex- 
"  araining  missionary  "  —  that  "  he  spent  his  life  in 
"  public  apostolic  dialectics  "  —  that  he  was  habitually 
actuated  by  "  his  persuasion  of  a  special  religious  mis- 
"  sion,"  1  we  are  at  once  carried  forward  from  the  time 
of  Socrates  himself  to  that  more  sacred  age  from  which 
these  expressions  are  borrowed,  and  by  which  alone  we 
are  enabled  fully  to  appreciate  what  Socrates  was  and 
did. 

The  comparisons  which  have  often  been  drawn  be- 
tween the  Galilean  Teacher  and  the  Athenian  sage  may 
have  been  at  times  exaggerated.  There  are  in  the  ac- 
companiments  of  the  character  of  Socrates  dark  shad- 
ows, grotesque  incidents,  unworthy  associations,  which 
render  any  such  parallel,  if  pressed  too  far,  as  painful 
and  as  untrue  as  the  like  parallels  that  have  sometimes 
been  found  in  Jacob  or  David,  or,  yet  more  rashly,  in 
Jephthah  or  Samson.     Still,  if  viewed  aright,  there  are 

1  Grote,  viii.  553,  566,  588. 


246  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XI/VI. 

few  more  remarkable  illustrations  of  the  reality  of  the 
Gospel  history  than  the  light  which,  by  way  of  contrast 
i  ikenesa  or  likeness,  is  thrown  upon  it  by  the  highest 
Goshei  example  of  Greek  antiquity.  It  is  instructive 
History.  to  0bserve  that  there,  almost  alone,  outside  of 
the  Jewish  race  is  to  be  found  the  career  which,  at 
however  remote  a  distance,  suggests  whether  to  friends 
or  enemies  a  solid  illustration  of  the  One  Life,  which 
is  the  turning-point  of  the  religion  of  the  whole  world. 
We  do  not  forget  the  marvellous  purity  of  the  life  of 
Buddha ; 1  nor  the  singular  likenesses  and  contrasts  be- 
tween the  rise  of  Islam2  and  the  rise  of  Christianity. 
But  there  are  points  of  comparison  where  these  fail, 
and  where  the  story  of  Socrates  is  full  of  suggestions. 
When  we  contemplate  the  contented  poverty,  the  self- 
devotion,  the  constant  publicity,  the  miscellaneous 
followers  of  Socrates,  we  feel  that  we  can  understand 
better  than  before  the  outward  aspect  at  least  of  that 
Sacred  Presence  which  moved  on  the  busy  shores  of 
the  Sea  of  Galilee,  and  in  the  streets  and  courts  of  Je- 
rusalem. When  we  read  of  the  dogged  obstinacy  of 
the  court  by  which  he  was  judged  —  the  religious  or 
superstitious  prejudices  invoked  against  him  —  the  ex- 
pression of  his  friend  when  all  was  finished  —  "  Such  was 
"  the  end  of  the  wisest  and  justest  and  best  of  all  the 
"  men  that  I  have  ever  known  "  —  another  Trial  and 
another  Parting  inevitably  rush  to  the  memory.  When 
we  read  the  last  conversations  of  the  prisoner  in  the 
Athenian  dungeon,  our  thoughts  almost  insensibly  rise 
to  the  farewell  discourses  in  the  upper  chamber  at  Je- 
rusalem with  gratitude  and  reverential  awe.  The  dif- 
ferences are  immense.     But  there  is  a  likeness  of  moral 

x  Sec  Lecture  XLV.  2  See   Lecture  VIII.  on   Eastern 

Church. 


Lect.  XLVL      LIKENESS   TO   CHEISTIAN  HISTORY.  247 

atmosphere,  even  of  external  incident,  that  cannot  fail 
to  strike  the  attention.  Or  (to  turn  to  another  side), 
when  we  are  perplexed  by  the  difficulty  of  reconciling 
the  narrative  of  the  first  three  Evangelists  with  the 
altered  tone  of  the  fourth,  it  is  at  least  to  step  towards 
the  solution  of  that  difficulty  to  remember  that  there  is 
here  a  parallel  diversity  between  the  Socrates  of  Xeno- 
phon  and  the  Socrates  of  Plato.  No  one  has  been 
tempted  by  that  diversity  to  doubt  the  substantial  iden- 
tity, the  true  character,  much  less  the  historical  exist- 
ence of  the  master  whom  they  both  profess  to  describe. 
The  divergences  of  Plato  from  Xenophon  are  incontest- 
able ;  the  introduction  of  his  own  coloring  and  thought 
undeniable  ;  and  yet  not  the  less  is  his  representation 
indispensable  to  the  complete  ideal  which  mankind  now 
reveres  as  the  picture  of  Socrates.  Nor,  when  we  think 
of  the  total  silence  of  Josephus,  or  of  other  contempo- 
rary writers,  respecting  the  events  which  we  now  re- 
gard as  greatest  in  the  history  of  mankind,  is  it  al- 
together irrelevant  to  reflect  that  for  the  whole  thirty 
years  comprised  in  the  most  serious  of  ancient  histories, 
Socrates  was  not  only  living,  but  acting  a  more  public 
part,  and,  for  all  the  future  ages  of  Greece,  an  incom- 
parably more  important  part,  than  any  other  Athenian 
citizen ;  and  yet  that  so  able  and  so  thoughtful  an  ob- 
server as  Thucydides  has  never  once  noticed  him  di- 
rectly or  indirectly.  There  is  no  stronger  proof  of  the 
weakness  of  the  argument  from  omission,  especially  in 
the  case  of  ancient  history,  which,  unlike  our  own,  con- 
tained within  its  range  of  vision  no  more  than  was  im- 
mediately before  it  for  the  moment. 

If  we  descend  from  this  higher  ground  to  those  lower 
but  still  lofty  regions,  which  yet  belong  to  the  Likeness  to 
closing  epoch  of  the   period    of  which    these  ic  History! 


248  SOCRATES.  Leot.  XLVL 

Lectures  propose  to  treat,  the  illustrations  supplied 
by  the  life  of  Socrates  are  still  more  apposite  and 
instructive.  When  we  are  reminded  of  the  "  apostolic  " 
self-devotion  of  Socrates  a  new  light  seems  to  break  on 
the  character  and  career  of  him  from  whose  life  that 
expression  is  especially  derived ;  and  the  glowing  lan- 
guage in  which  the  English  historian  of  Greece  de- 
scribes  the  energy  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Athenian 
missionary  enables  us  to  realize  with  greater  force  than 
ever  "  the  pureness,  and  knowledge,  and  love  un- 
"  feigned  "  of  the  missionary  in  a  higher  cause,  who  ar- 
gued in  the  very  market-place  where  Socrates  had  con- 
versed more  than  four  centuries  before,  and  was,  like 
him,  accused  of  being  a  "vain  babbler"  and  a  "  setter- 
"  forth  of  strange  gods." 2  And  even  in  minute  detail 
there  are  some  passages  of  the  Apostle's  life  which  are 
singularly  elucidated  by  the  corresponding  features  in 
the  career  of  the  philosopher.  How  much  more  vividly, 
for  example,  do  we  understand  the  relation  of  St.  Paul, 
himself  a  Rabbi,  to  the  teachers  of  his  time,  at  once  be- 
longing to  them  and  distinct  from  them,  when  we  con- 
template the  like  relation  of  Socrates  to  the  Sophists  S 
How  striking  is  the  coincidence  between  the  indignant 
refusal  of  St.  Paul  in  these  very  cities  of  Athens  and 
Corinth  to  receive  remuneration  for  his  labors,  and  the 
similar  protest  of  Socrates,  by  precept  and  example, 
against  the  injurious  effect  produced  on  teachers  by  di- 
rect dependence  on  the  casual  contributions,  on  the  vol- 
untary or  involuntary  payment  of  their  hearers  ! 2  And 
how  remarkably  is  the  vulgar  feeling  of  the  Roman 
world  towards  the  Apostles  and  their  converts  illus- 
trated by  the  vulgar  feeling  of  the  Athenian  world  to- 
wards Socrates  and  his  pupils !     In  the   attack  which 

1  Acts  xvii.  18.  2  Grote,  viii.  482.     Comp.  1  Cor.  ix.  1-18. 


Lbct.  XLVI.      LIKENESS   TO   APOSTOLIC  HISTORY.  249 

was  made  at  two  distinct  periods  on  Alcibiades  and  on 
Socrates  we  see  the  union  of  the  great  mass  of  Athenian 
society,  both  democratical  and  aristocratical,  against 
what  they  conceived  to  be  revolutionary,  and  against 
men  who  were  obnoxious  because  they  towered  above 
their  age.  As  in  the  alleged  plot  of  the  mutilation  of 
the  Hermaa,  Thessalus,  the  son  of  the  aristocratic  Cimon, 
and  Androcles,  the  demagogue,  both  united  against  Al- 
cibiades in  the  charge  of  overthrowing  the  constitution 
and  establishing  a  tyranny  —  so  Aristophanes,  the  poet 
of  the  aristocracy,  and  Anytus,  the  companion  of  the  ex- 
iled leader  of  the  popular  party,  combined  in  bringing 
against  Socrates  the  charge  of  overthrowing  mythol- 
ogy and  establishing  atheism.  In  each  case  there  was 
a  real  danger  to  be  discovered  —  if  the  prosecutors 
could  have  discerned  it.  Alcibiades  was  at  work  on  de- 
signs which  might  have  dissolved  the  existing  bonds  of 
society  at  Athens,  and  perhaps  made  him  its  tyrant  and 
destroyer.  Socrates  was  at  work  on  designs  which 
would  ultimately  tend  to  place  the  religion  and  moral- 
ity of  Greece  on  a  totally  new  foundation.  They  failed 
to  convict  Alcibiades,  because  his  plans  were  not  yet 
fully  developed  ;  they  failed  to  convict  Socrates  justly, 
because  his  design  was  one  which  none  but  the  noblest 
minds  could  understand.  So  far  there  was  a  resem- 
blance between  the  two  cases  —  a  resemblance  of  which 
the  enemies  of  Socrates  made  the  most.  But,  as  every 
one  now  recognizes,  the  difference  was  far  wider.  Alci- 
biades was  really  what  he  was  taken  to  be,  the  repre- 
sentative of  all  that  was  worst  in  the  teaching  of  the 
Sophists  —  of  all  that  was  most  hostile  to  faith  and 
virtue.  Socrates,  whilst  formally  belonging  to  the 
Sophists,  was  really  the  champion  of  all  that  was  most 
true  and  most  holy ;    and  he  fell  a  victim  to  the  blind- 

32 


250  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLV1. 

ness  which  in  all  great  movements  has  again  and  again 
confounded  two  elements  intrinsically  dissimilar,  be- 
cause externally  they  both  happened  to  be  opposed  to 
the  prevailing  opinion  of  the  time. 

There  is  no  passage  in  history  which  more  happily 
illustrates  the  position  which  was  taken  up  against  the 
Christian  apostles  and  missionaries  of  the  first  and 
second  centuries  —  a  position  which  has  not  unfre- 
quently  been  overlooked  or  misapprehended.  "  Christ- 
"  ianity,"  as  has  been  well  remarked,  "  shared  the  com- 
"mon  lot  of  every  great  moral  change  which  has  ever 
"  taken  place  in  human  society,  by  containing  amongst 
"  its  supporters  men  who  were  morally  the  extreme  op- 
"posites  of  each  other."1  No  careful  reader  of  the 
Epistles  can  fail  to  perceive  the  constant  struggle  which 
the  Apostles  had  to  maintain,  not  only  against  the  Jew 
and  the  heathen  external  to  the  Christian  society,  but 
against  the  wild  and  licentious  doctrines  which  took 
shelter  within  it.  The  same  confusion  which  had  taken 
place  in  the  Athenian  mind  in  the  case  of  Socrates 
and  Alcibiades,  took  place  in  the  first  century  of  the 
Christian  era  with  regard  to  the  Apostles  and  the  fierce 
fanatics  of  the  early  Church,  who  were  to  all  outward 
appearance  on  the  same  side,  both  equally  bent  on  rev- 
olutionizing the  existing  order  of  civil  society.  As  Aris- 
tophanes could, not  distinguish  between  the  licentious 
arguments  of  the  wilder  class  of  sophists  and  the  elevat- 
ing and  inspiring  philosophy  of  Socrates,  so  Tacitus 
could  not  distinguish  between  the  anarchists  whom  St. 
Paul  and  St.  Peter  were  laboring  to  repress,  and  the 
Dure  morality  and  faith  which  they  were  laboring  to 
propagate.  He  regarded  them  both  as  belonging  to 
'*  an  execrable    race,"   "  hateful   for  their    abominable 

1  Arnold's  Fragment  on  the  Church,  85. 


Lbct.  XL VI.    ANTICIPATIONS  OF  A  HIGHER  REVELATION.     251 

"crimes;"  and  as  the  Greek  poet  could  see  nothing  but 
an  atheist  in  Socrates,  so  the  Roman  historian  would 
have  joined  in  the  cry,  "Away  with  the  atheists,' 
which  was  raised  against  the  first  Christians.  In  each 
case  the  next  generation  judged  more  wisely  and  more 
justly.  Socrates  was  in  the  age  of  Plato  and  Aristotle 
more  fully  appreciated,  and  the  gross  mistake  which 
Tacitus  had  made  with  regard  to  Christianity  in  the 
reign  of  Nero  we  learn  from  the  milder  tone  of  the 
younger  Pliny  to  have  passed  away  in  the  reign  of  Tra- 
jan. But  these  warnings  are  instructive  for  every  age ; 
and  it  is  because  the  two  cases,  amidst  infinite  diversity, 
tend  to  explain  each  other  that  we  have  ventured  thus 
far  to  anticipate  the  story  of  coming  events,  and  to 
bring  them  together  as  combining  to  read  the  same  in- 
dispensable lesson  of  religious  wisdom. 

Besides  these  indirect  illustrations  of  the  Hebrew 
annals  in  the  life  of  Socrates  there  are  also  indications 
in  the  Platonic  representations  of  his  teaching  which 
bring  it  directly  within  the  prophetic  scope  of  the 
Sacred  History.  Not  only  in  the  hope  of  a  Prince 
of  the  House  of  David,  or  an  Elijah  returning  from 
the  invisible  world,  who  should  set  right  the  wrong 
and  deliver  the  oppressed,  but  in  the  still  small  voice 
that  was  heard  by  the  Ilissus  or  on  the  quays  General  an_ 
of  the  Piraeus  was  there  a  call  for  another  ^hl^r 
Charmer  who  might  come  when  Socrates  was  reveIat,on- 
gone  —  even  amongst  the  barbarian  races1  —  one  who 
should  be  sought  for  far  and  wide,  "  for  there  is  no 
"  better  way  of  using  money  than  to  find  such  an 
"  one."  Not  only  in  the  Man  of  Sorrows,  as  depicted 
by  the  Evangelical  Prophet,  but  in  the  anticipations 
of  the   Socratic  dialogues,  there  was   the  vision,  ever 

1  Phcedo,  78;  Polilkus,  262. 


252  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI 

to  the  very  letter,  of  the  Just  Man,  scorned,  despised, 
condemned,  tortured,  slain,  by  an  ungrateful  or  stupid 
world,  yet  still  triumphant.1  And  yet  a  higher  strain 
is  heard.  No  doubt  the  Egyptian  monuments  speak 
of  another  life,  and  the  Grecian  mythology  and  poetry 
spoke  of  the  Tartarus  and  Elysium  and  the  Isles  of 
the  Blessed.  No  doubt  the  Hebrew  Psalmists  and 
Prophets  contained  aspirations  for  a  bright  hereafter, 
and  also  dim  imagery  of  the  under-world  of  the  grave. 
But  in  the  dialogue  of  Socrates  in  the  prison,  the 
conviction  of  a  future  existence  is  urged  —  whatever 
may  be  thought  of  the  arguments  —  with  an  impres- 
sive earnestness  which  has  left  a  more  permanent 
mark  on  the  world,2  and  of  which  the  Jewish  mind, 
hitherto  so  dark  and  vacant  on  this  momentous  topic, 
was  destined  henceforth  to  become  the  ready  recipient 
and  the  chief  propagator.  There  was  also  the  double 
stream  of  the  two  philosophies  which  have  since  flowed 
from  the  teaching  of  Socrates ;  each  of  which  has  in 
turn  dominated  in  some  measure  the  Jewish  Church, 
in  a  still  larger  measure  the  Christian  Church  —  the 
"  world  unrealized  "  of  Plato,  the  counterpart,  in  Hel- 
lenic phrase  and  form,  of  the  anticipations  of  the 
Hebrew  Prophets  ;  the  "  world  explored  "  of  Aristotle, 
is  we  have  already  indicated,  and  shall  have  occasion 
again  to  notice,  the  counterpart,  on  a  colossal  scale,  of 
the  boundless  knowledge  and  practical  wisdom,  as  it 
was  believed,  of  Solomon 3  and  his  followers. 

These  details  belong  to  a  later  stage  of  the  history, 
The  general  an(^  are  connected  with  Socrates  himself  more 
jf'sfcra-  or  less  remotely.  It  is  true  that  he  founded 
te8,  no  school,  that  he  refused  the  title  of  master. 

1  Plato's  Republic,  3G2.  Life,  185-193.    See  Lectures  XLVII 

Alger's    Foctrine    of   a   Future     and  XLVIII. 

«  Lectures  XXVIII.  and  XLVIL 


Lect.  XL VI.  HIS   GENERAL  INFLUENCE.  253 

No  definite  system  of  opinions  or  of  doctrines  can 
be  traced  to  his  instructions.  Some  of  his  chief  ad- 
mirers fell  into  courses  of  life  or  adopted  theories 
of  philosophy  which  he  would  have  highly  disap- 
proved. But  not  the  less  from  him  came  the  gen- 
eral impulse,  of  which  the  effects  were  henceforth  evi- 
dent to  a  certain  extent  in  every  province  touched  by 
the  Greek  intellect,  and  which  bear,  therefore,  on  the 
future  prospects  of  the  Jewish  Church  as  clearly  as 
the  teaching  of  Isaiah  or  of  Ezra.  That  which  cannot 
be  questioned,  and  which  places  him  at  once  in  the 
midst  of  the  pathway  of  the  development  of  the  Jewish 
religion,  is  that  his  appearance  exercised  an  influence 
over  the  whole  subsequent  history  of  European  specu- 
lation :  that  he  stands  at  the  very  fountain-head  of 
philosophical  thought. 

Although,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Hebrew  predictions 
of  the  glory  of  the  restored  Commonwealth  of  Israel, 
there  was  no  literal  fulfilment  of  the  hopes  of  Socrates 
that  his  own  peculiar  weapons  of  instruction  would  be 
taken  up  by  his  successors,  yet,  like  those  same  pre- 
dictions, in  a  larger  and  higher  sense  these  hopes  were 
accomplished  by  the  lasting  results  which  his  mighty 
originality  achieved.  The  moral  sciences  then  first 
took  the  place  in  philosophy  which  they  have  never 
since  lost.  "  Out  of  other  minds  he  struck  the  fire 
"  which  set  light  to  original  thought,  permanently  en- 
"  larging  the  horizon,  improving  the  method,  and  mul- 
"  tiplying  the  ascendant  minds  of  the  speculative 1 
"world"  for  all  subsequent  generations 

Again,  Socrates  stands  conspicuous  as  the  first  great 
example  of  the  union  between  vigorous  inquiry  and 
profound  religious  belief.      There  was  nothing  in  the 

1  Grote,  viii.  621. 


254  SOCRATES.  Lect    XLVL 

Hebrew  Scriptures  to  prevent  such  an  alliance.  But. 
there  is  hardly  any  positive  instance  of  its  realization. 
In  the  Book  of  Job  and  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes  there 
is  anxious  inquiry,  but  it  is  united  rather  with  religious 
perplexity  and  despair  than  with  religious  faith.  In  the 
Psalms  there  is  unshaken  confidence  in  the  laws  of  God 
and  of  nature  ;  but  the  restless  curiosity  of  the  mod- 
ern world  is  still  absent.  In  the  Proverbs  there  is  an 
ample  glorification  of  Wisdom ;  but  it  is  rather  of  prac- 
tical sagacity  and  common  sense,  than  of  active  specu- 
lation. But  in  Socrates,  for  the  first  time,  we  see  that 
complete  union  which  many  have  doubted  to  be  possi- 
ble, but  after  which  the  best  of  later  times  have  ardent- 
ly aspired.  "  Socrates,"  so  speaks  the  impartial  voice 
of  the  modern  historian,  "  was  the  reverse  of  a  sceptic: 
"  no  man  ever  looked  upon  life  with  a  more  positive 
"  and  practical  eye :  no  man  ever  pursued  his  mark 
"  with  a  clearer  perception  of  the  road  which  he  was 
"  travelling :  no  man  ever  combined,  in  like  manner, 
"  the  absorbing  enthusiasm  of  a  missionary,  with  the 
"  acuteness,  the  originality,  the  inventive  resource,  and 
"  the  generalizing  comprehension  of  a  philosopher."  1 

Amidst  the  controversies  of  modern  times  it  is  a 
rare  satisfaction  to  know  that  the  boldest  philosophical 
enterprise  ever  undertaken  was  conceived,  executed, 
and  completed,  in  and  through  a  spirit  of  intense  and 
sincere  devotion.  The  clash  between  religion  and 
science  was  discerned  by  him,  no  less  clearly  than  by 
us  ;  his  course  was  more  difficult  than  ours,  in  propor- 
tion as  Paganism  was  more  difficult  to  reconcile  with 
reason  than  Judaism  or  Christianity  —  yet  to  the 
end   he    retained   his   hold  equally  on  both;    and   nc 

1  Grote,  viii.  669. 


Lect.  xlvi.  his  general  influence.  255 

faithful  history  can   claim  his  witness  to  the  one  with 
out  acknowledging  his  witness  to  the  other  also. 

Lastly,  there  is  the  especial,  the  singular  preroga- 
tive of  Socrates  —  his  faculty,  his  mission,  his  life,  of 
cross-examination.  The  points  which  we  have  just 
enumerated  have  been  shared  with  him  by  others  ;  but 
in  this  his  own  favorite,  life-long  method  of  pursuing  or 
suggesting  truth  — 

"Where  are  we  to  look  for  a  parallel  to  Socrates, 
"  either  in  or  out  of  the  Grecian  world  ?  The  cross- 
"  examining  disputation,  which  he  not  only  first  struck 
"  out,  but  wielded  with  such  matchless  effect  and  to  such 
"  noble  purposes,  has  been  mute  ever  since  his  last  con- 
(i  versation  in  the  prison ;  for  even  his  great  successor 
"  Plato  was  a  writer  and  lecturer,  not  a  colloquial  dialec- 
"  tician.  No  man  has  ever  been  found  strong  enough 
"  to  bend  his  bow ;  much  less,  sure  enough  to  use  it  as 
"  he  did.  His  life  remains  as  the  only  evidence,  but  a 
"  very  satisfactory  evidence,  how  much  can  be  done  by 
"  this  sort  of  intelligent  interrogation ;  how  powerful 
"  is  the  interest  which  it  can  be  made  to  inspire  ;  how 
"  energetic  the  stimulus  which  it  can  apply  in  awak- 
ening dormant  reason  and  generating  new  mental 
"  power."  1 

True  it  is  that  the  reappearance  of  such  a  man,  in 
subsequent  stages  of  society  is  all  but  impossible.  The 
modern  privacy  of  domestic  life,  the  established  order 
of  social  intercourse,  the  communication  through  books 
rather  than  through  speech,  render  that  perpetual  dia- 
logue wholly  impracticable,  which  in  the  open  out-of- 
door  life  of  Greece  needed  only  courage  and  resolution 
to  be  adequately  sustained.     But  though  the  remedy  is 

1  Grote,  viii.  614. 


256  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLV1 

impossible,  the  need  for  it  cannot  be  said  to  have 
diminished  :  — 

"  However  little  that  instrument  may  have  been  ap- 
"  plied  since  the  death  of  its  inventor,  the  necessity  and 
<•'  use  of  it  neither  have  disappeared,  nor  ever  can  dis- 
"  appear.  There  are  few  men  whose  minds  are  not 
"  more  or  less  in  that  state  of  sham  knowledge  against 
"  which  Socrates  made  war :  there  is  no  one  whose  no- 
"  tions  have  not  been  first  got  together  by  spontaneous, 
"  unexamined,  unconscious,  uncertified  association,  rest- 
"  ing  upon  forgotten  particulars,  blending  together  dis- 
"  parities  or  inconsistencies,  and  leaving  in  his  mind  old 
"  and  familiar  phrases,  and  oracular  propositions,  of 
"  which  he  has  never  rendered  to  himself  account : 
"  there  is  no  man,  who,  if  he  be  destined  for  vigorous 
"  and  profitable  scientific  effort,  has  not  found  it  a  ne- 
cessary branch  of  self-instruction,  to  break  up,  dis- 
"  entangle,  analyze,  and  reconstruct  these  ancient  men- 
"  tal  compounds  —  and  who  has  not  been  driven  to  do 
"  it  by  his  own  lame  and  solitary  efforts,  since  the  giant 
"  of  colloquial  philosophy  no  longer  stands  in  the  mar- 
"  ket-place  to  lend  him  help  and  stimulus."  l 

He  no  longer  stands  amongst  us.  Yet  we  can  fancy 
what  would  result  were  he  now  to  visit  the  earth  — 
were  he  once  more  to  appear  with  that  Silenic  physiog- 
nomy, with  that  grotesque  manner,  with  that  indomit- 
able resolution,  with  that  captivating  voice,  with  that 
homely  humor,  wTith  that  solemn  earnestness,  with  that 
siege  of  questions  —  among  the  crowded  parties  of  our 
metropolis,  under  the  groves  and  cloisters  of  our  uni- 
versities, in  the  midst  of  our  political,  our  ecclesiastical, 
our  religious  meetings,  on  the  floor  of  our  legislative 
assemblies,  at  the  foot  of  the  pulpits  of  our  well-filled 

1  Grote,  viii.  670. 


Lect.  XL VI.  HIS   GENERAL  INFLUENCE.  257 

churches.  How  often  in  a  conversation,  in  a  book,  in 
a  debate,  in  a  speech,  in  a  sermon,  have  we  longed  for 
the  doors  to  open  and  for  the  son  of  Sophroniscus  to 
enter  —  how  often,  in  the  heat  of  angry  accusations,  in 
the  tempest  of  pamphlets,  in  the  rabbinical  subtleties 
or  in  the  theological  controversies,  that  have  darkened 
counsel  by  words  without  knowledge  for  eighteen  cen- 
turies and  more,  in  Judaic  or  Christian  times,  might 
souls,  weary  with  unmeaning  phrases  and  undefined 
issues,  have  been  tempted  to  exclaim :  "  0,  for  one 
hour  of  Socrates !  "  0,  for  one  hour  of  that  voice  which 
should  by  its  searching  cross-examination  make  men 
see  what  they  knew  and  what  they  did  not  know  — 
what  they  meant,  and  what  they  only  thought  they 
meant  —  what  they  believed  in  truth,  and  what  they 
only  believed  in  name  —  wherein  they  agreed,  and 
wherein  they  differed!  Differences,  doubtless,  would 
still  remain,  but  they  would  be  the  differences  of  seri- 
ous and  thinking  men,  and  there  would  be  a  cessation 
of  the  hollow  catchwords  and  empty  shibboleths  by 
which  all  differences  are  inflamed  and  aggravated. 
The  voice  of  the  great  Cross-examiner  himself  is  in- 
deed silent,  but  there  is  a  voice  in  each  man's  heart 
and  conscience  which,  if  we  will,  Socrates  has  taught 
us  to  use  rightly.  That  voice,  more  sacred  than  the 
divine  monitor  of  Socrates  himself,  can  still  make  itself 
heard ;  that  voice  still  enjoins  us  to  give  to  ourselves  a 
reason  for  the  hope  that  is  in  us  —  "  both  hearing  and 
"  asking  questions."  He  gave  the  stimulus  which  pre- 
pared the  Western  world  for  the  Great  Inquirer,  the 
Divine  Word  which  should  "  pierce  even  to  the  divid- 
4  ing  asunder  of  soul  and  spirit,  and  of  the  joints  and 
'  marrow "  of   the    human   mind,    "  and    discern   the 

33 


258  SOCRATES.  Lect.  XLVI. 

"  thoughts  and  intents  of  the  heart."  x  For  that  fancied 
repose,  which  the  spirit  of  inquiry,  whether  from  within 
or  without,  disturbs,  the  example  of  Socrates,  and  of 
the  long  line  of  his  followers  in  Christendom,  encour- 
ages us  to  hope  we  shall  be  more  than  compensated 
by  the  real  repose  which  it  gives  instead.  "  A  wise 
"  questioning "  is  indeed  "  the  half  of  knowledge.'' 
"  A  life  without  cross-examination  is  no  life  at  all." 

1  Heb.  iv.  12. 


LECTURE  XLVII. 

ALEXANDRIA,  B.  C.  333-150. 


Jewish  Authorities  :  — 

Josephus,  Ant.,  xi.  8-xii.  4.     a.  d.  7C. 

3  Maccabees. 

Wisdom  of  the  Son  of  Sirach  (Ecclesiasticus)  : 

In  Hebrew,  b.  c.  200. 
In  Greek,  B.  c.  132. 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,  Qu.  B.  C.  50? 

Aristobulus,  b.  c.  180,  in  Eusebius,  Prcep.  Ev.  vii.  13;  viii.  9 
ix.  6  ;  xiii.  12. 

Heathen  Authorities  :  — 

Hecataeus  of  Abdera,  b.  c.  320  (Josephus,  c.  Apion,  i.  22). 
Agatharchides  (ibid.). 
Clearchus  (ibid.). 


CHRONOLOGY. 
ALEXANDER   THE   GREAT,  B.  C.  336-323. 


Kings  of  Egypt. 

Jewish  High  Priests. 

Kings  of  Syria. 

Ptolemy    I.  (Soter), 

Jaddua,  b.  c.  333. 

Seleucus  I.  (Nicator), 

b.  c.  322. 

Simon  I.,  B.  c.  310. 

B.  c.  312. 

Ptolemy  II.  (Philadelphia), 

Eleazar,  b.  c.  291. 

Antiochus  I.  (Soter), 

b.  c.  285. 

Manasseh,  b.  c.  27G. 

b.  c.  280. 

Ptolemy  III.  (Euergetes  I.), 

Onias,  II.,  b.  c.  250. 

Antiochus  II.  (Theos), 

B.  c.  24G. 

b.  c.  201. 

Ptolemy  IV.  (Philopator), 

Simon  II.  (the  Just),  b.c.  219. 

Seleucus  II.  (Callinicus), 

B.  c.  221. 

b.  c.  246. 

Ptolemy    V.  (Epiphanes), 

Onias  III.,  n.  c.  199. 

Seleucus  III.  (Keraunos), 

b.  c.  205. 

b.c.  220. 

Ptolemy  VI.  (Philometor), 

Jason,  b.  c.  175. 

Antiochus  III.  (The  Great), 

B.C.  181. 

b.  c.  224. 

Ptolemy  VII.  (Physcon) 

Seleucus  IV.     (Philopator), 

(Euergetes  II.), 

b.  c.  187. 

b.  c.  14G. 

Antiochus  IV.  (Epiphanes), 
B.  c.  175. 

PALESTINE    I>   THE   GREEK    AND  ROMAN    PERIOD 


I   Town*. 

BeroSlan  D? Sebaste 

Vaccdbean  U? Modin 


LECTURE  XLVIL 

ALEXANDRIA. 

It  was  a  striking  remark *  of  Hegel  that  Greece,  the 
blooming;  youth  of  the  world,  came  in  with  the 

Alexander. 

youth  Achilles,  and  went  out  with  the  youth 
Alexander.  But  if  Grecian  history  died  with  Alexander, 
Grecian  influence  was  created  by  him.  If  Hellas  ceased, 
Hellenism,  the  spirit  of  the  Greek  race  throughout  the 
Eastern  world,  now  began  its  career.  In  the  Prophets 
of  the  Captivity  we  felt  the  electric  shock  produced  by 
the  conquest  of  Cyrus.  There  is  unfortunately  no  con- 
temporary prophet  in  whom  we  can  in  like  manner  ap- 
preciate the  approach  of  Alexander.  Yet  that  was  no 
inapt  vision  which,  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  pictured  the 
marvellous  sight 2  of  the  mountain  goat  from  the  Ionian 
shores,  bounding  over  the  face  of  the  earth  so  swiftly  as 
not  to  touch  the  ground  —  with  one  beautiful  horn, 
like  the  unicorn  on  the  Persepolitan  monuments,  be- 
tween his  eyes  —  which  ran  in  the  fury  of  his  power 
against  the    double-horned   ram,  the  emblem3  of  the 

1  Philosophy  of  History,  233.  of  Dan.  ii.  39,  agrees  in  order  with 

2  Dan.  viii.  5.  the   leopard   of   Dan.   vii.  6,  which 
8  I  confine  the  illustrations  from     agrees  with  the  Grecian  monarchy, 

the  Book  of  Daniel  to  those  which  particularly  in  regard  to  the  swift- 
are  certain.  The  arrangement  of  the  ness  of  the  animal  "  and  the  four 
two  visions  of  the  four  empires  is  so  "heads."  On  the  other  hand,  the 
difficult  to  combine  with  any  single  last  horn  of  the  fourth  beast  (Dan. 
hypothesis  that  it  belongs  to  the  vii.  8)  must  almost  certaiuly  be  iden- 
commentator  on  the  several  passages  tified  with  the  last  horn  of  the  he- 
rather  than  to  a  general  historical  goat,  (Dan.  viii.  9)  and  this  (Dan. 
survey.     On  the  one  hand  the  brass  viii.  11)  must  be  Antiochus  Epiph- 


262  ALEXANDKIA.  Lect.  XLVIL 

Kings  of  Media  and  Persia,  "  and  there  was  no  power  in 
"  the  ram  to  stand  before  him,  but  he  cast  him  down 
"  to  the  ground,  and  stamped  upon  him,  and  there  was 
"  none  to  deliver  the  ram  out  of  his  hand."  So  it  was 
in  a  yet  wider  sense  than  the  ancient  seer  had  dis- 
cerned :  "  Asia  beheld  with  astonishment  and  awe  the 
"  uninterrupted  progress  of  a  hero,  the  sweep  of  whose 
"  conquests  was  as  wide  and  as  rapid  as  that  of  her  own 
"  barbaric  kings,  'or  of  the  Scythian  or  Chaldoean 
"hordes;  but,  far  unlike  the  transient  whirlwinds  of 
"  Asiatic  warfare,  the  advance  of  the  Macedonian  leader 
"  was  no  less  deliberate  than  rapid  ;  at  every  step  the 
"  Greek  power  took  rcot,  and  the  language  and  civil- 
"  ization  of  Greece  were  planted  from  the  shores  of  the 
"  iEgean  to  the  banks  of  the  Indus,  from  the  Caspian 
"  and  the  great  Hyrcanian  plain  to  the  Cataracts  of  the 
"  Nile ;  to  exist  actually  for  nearly  a  thousand  years, 
"  and  in  their  effects  to  endure  forever.  In  the  tenth 
"  year  after  he  had  crossed  the  Hellespont,  Alexander, 
"  having  won  his  vast  dominion,  entered  Babylon,  and, 
"  resting  from  his  career  in  that  oldest  seat  of  earthly 
"  empire,  he  steadily  surveyed  the  mass  of  various  na- 
"  tions  which  owned  his  sovereignty,  and  revolved  in 
"  his  mind  the  great  work  of  breathing  into  this  huge 
"  but  inert  body  the  living  spirit  of  Greek  civilization. 
'*  In  the  bloom  of  youthful  manhood,  at  the  age  of 
'thirty-two,  he  paused  from  the  fiery  speed  of  his 
"  earlier  course  ;  and  for  the  first  time  gave  the  nations 
"an  opportunity  of  offering  their  homage  before  his 
"  throne.  They  came  from  all  the  extremities  of  the 
'  earth,  to  propitiate  his  anger,  to  celebrate  his  great- 
•'ness,  or  to  solicit  his  protection."1 

anes  (Dan.  xi.  36).  For  the  chrono-  xii.  12,  see  note  at  the  end  of  Lec- 
logical   enigma  of   Dan.   xi.  24-27;     ture  XLVIII. 

1  Arnold's  Rome,  ii.  169. 


Lect,  XLVH.      ALEXANDER  AT  BABYLON.  263 

Amongst  those  various  races  two  nations  are  said, 
either  then  or  in  the  earlier  stages  of  his  advance,  to 
have  approached  the  Grecian  conqueror.  Both  inter- 
views are  wrapt  in  doubtful  legend ;  yet  both  may  have 
an  element  of  truth,  and  both  certainly  represent  the 
enduring  connection  of  that  career  with  the  two  other 
most  powerful  currents  of  human  history. 

"'Later  writers,1  yielding  to  that  natural  feeling 
"  which  longs  to  bring  together  the  great  characters  of 
"  remote  ages  and  countries  and  delights  to  fancy  how 
"  they  would  have  regarded  one  another,  asserted  ex- 
"  pressly  that  a  Roman  Embassy  did  appear  before 
"Alexander  in  Babylon;  that  the  King,  like  Cineas 
"  afterwards,  was  struck  with  the  dignity  and  manly 
"bearing  of  the  Roman  patricians,  that  he  informed 
"  himself  concerning  their  constitution,  and  prophesied 
"  that  the  Romans  would  one  clay  become  a  great 
"  power.  This  story  Arrian  justly  disbelieves :  but 
"  history  may  allow  us  to  think  that  Alexander  and  a 
"  Roman  ambassador  did  meet  at  Babylon  ;  that  the 
"  greatest  man  of  the  ancient  world  saw  and  spoke  with 
"  a  citizen  of  that  great  nation,  which  was  destined  to 
"  succeed  him  in  his  appointed  work,  and  to  found  a 
"wider  and  still  more  enduring  empire.  They  met, 
"  too,  in  Babylon,  almost  beneath  the  shadow  of  the 
"  temple  of  Bel  —  perhaps  the  earliest  monument  ever 
"  raised  by  human  pride  and  power  —  in  a  city  stricken, 
"  as  it  were,  by  the  word  of  God's  heaviest  judgment, 
'  as  the  symbol  of  greatness  apart  from  and  opposed  to 
"  goodness." 

A  like  scene  was  recounted  in  various  forms  by  the 
Jewish  writers  when,  after  the  battle  of  Issus,  Alexander 

.at  Tyre. 

Alexander  arrived  at  the  other  most  ancient liC- 333- 

1  Arnold's  Rome,  ii.  173. 


264  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XL VII 

seat  of  Asiatic  power — Tyre.  That  old  queen  of  the 
Mediterranean  had,  as  we  see  by  this  account,  sur- 
vived the  destruction  anticipated  by  Ezekiel  two  cen- 
turies before.  Her  impregnable  island  fortress,'  her 
king,  her  worship  of  Melcarth  or  Moloch,  probably 
with  only  a  shadow  of  her  former  grandeur,  still  re- 
mained, like  the  stately  colony  of  Venice  after  the  fall 
of  the  Roman  empire  —  a  relic  of  the  Old  World  long 
passed  away.  Thither  came  embassies  from  the  rival 
cities  of  Jerusalem  and  Shechem,  each  claiming  his  pro- 
tection—  the  Jewish  settlement,  if  we  may  believe 
their  account,  still  faithful1  to  their  Persian  benefac- 
tors ;  the  Samaritans  still  smarting  from  the  insult  in- 
flicted on  their  second  founder,  the  High  Priest  Ma- 
nasseh.  At  last  the  Phoenician  capital  fell  before  that 
stupendous  mole,  which  forever  destroyed  its  insular 
character,  and  Alexander  inarched  on  to  reduce  the 
fortress  of  Gaza,  which  on  its  sandy  eminence  defied 
him  in  the  south.  It  was  on  his  return  from  his  savage 
triumph  over  the  gallant  defender  of  that  last  strong- 
hold of  the  old  Philistine  power  that  he  is  represented 
as  marching  on  the  only  remaining  fortress  that  had 
refused  to  submit.  It  may  have  been  that,  like  the 
French  conqueror  of  later  times,  he  may  have  thought 
that  "  Jerusalem  did  not  lie  within  the  lines  of  his  oper- 
"  ations;"  and  such  is  the  effect  of  the  silence  of  the 
Greek  historians,  and  after  them  of  some  of  the  most 
Alexander  critical  of  modern  historians  likewise.  But 
?aicm.  there  is  nothing  incredible  in  the  occurrence 
of  some  such  event,  as,  in  divers  forms,  has  entered  into 
the  Jewish  annals.    The  Samaritan  version  concentrated 

1  The  fidelity  of  the  Jews  to  their  dwelt  upon,  see  Josephus,  .4;;/.,  xii. 
oaths  of  allegiance,  even  when  con-  1,  1,  and  compare  the  severe  con- 
tracted with  heathen  princes  is  much     demnation  of  Zedekiah,  Lecture  XL 


Lect.  XL VII.  ALEXANDER  AT  JERUSALEM.  265 

the  whole  interest  of  the  story  in  their  High  Priest 
Hezekiah x  —  the  Jewish  version  fluctuates  between  the 
Talmud  and  Josephus.  Alexander  had  come  —  so  the 
Rabbinical  account  runs  —  to  Antipatris2  at  the  en- 
trance of  the  mountains,  or,  according  to  Josephus, 
mounted  by  the  pass  of  Beth-boron,  and  found  himself 
standing  with  Parmenio  on  the  eminence  long  known 
as  "  the  watch  tower "  —  in  earlier  days  by  its  He- 
brew name  of  Mizpeh,3  in  later  times  by  the  correspond- 
ing Greek  name  of  Scopus.  There,  before  the  conquest 
of  Jebus,  Samuel  had  held  his  assemblies ;  there,  as  in 
a  commanding  place  of  oversight,  the  Chalclsean  and 
the  Persian  Viceroys  had  their  habitations ;  there  was 
the  Maccabsean  wailing-place  ;  and  there  Sennacherib, 
and  afterwards  Titus,  had  their  first  view  of  the  holy 
city ;  and  there,  with  Parmenio  at  his  side,  the  Grecian 
conqueror  now  stood,  with  the  same  prospect  spread 
before  him.  Suddenly  from  the  city  emerged  a  long 
procession  —  the  whole  population  streamed  out,  dressed 
in  white.  The  priestly  tribe,  in  their  white  robes ;  the 
High  Priest,  apparently  the  chief  authority  in  the  place, 
in  his  purple  and  gold  attire,  his  turban  on  his  head, 
bearing  the  golden  plate  on  which  was  inscribed  the  in- 
effable name  of  Jehovah.  It  was  Jacldua,  the  grandson4 
of  the  indulgent  Eliashib,  the  son  of  the  murderer 
John,  who,  as  it  was  said  in  his  agony  of  fear  at 
Alexander's  approach,  had  been  warned  in  a  dream  to 
take  this  method  of  appeasing  the  conqueror's  wrath. 
"  Who  are  these  ?  "  said  he  to  the  Samaritan  guides, 
who  had  gained  from  him  the  promise  of  the  destruc- 

1  Derenbourg,  43.  4  In  the  Talmud,  Simon  the  Just. 

2  Ibid.  42.  (Derenbourg,    42).       But     this    is 
8  See  Mr.  Grove  on  Mizpeh,  Die-     against  all  chronology. 

tionanj  of  the  Bible,  389. 
34 


266  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII 

tion  of  the  Temple  and  the  possession  of  Mount  Mo- 
riah.  "  They  are  the  rebels  who  deny  your  author- 
"  ity," l  said  the  rival  sect.  They  marched  all  night,  in 
two  ranks,  preceded  by  torches  and  with  the  band  of 
priestly  musicians  clashing  their  cymbals.  It  was  at 
the  sunrise  of  a  winter 2  morning,  long  afterwards  ob- 
served as  a  joyous  festival,  when  they  stood  before  the 
king.  To  the  astonishment  of  the  surrounding  chiefs3 
Alexander  descended  from  his  chariot  and  bowed  to  the 
earth  before  the  Jewish  leader.  None  ventured  to  ask 
the  meaning  of  this  seeming  frenzy,  save  Parmenio 
alone.  "  Why  should  he,  whom  all  men  worship,  wor- 
"  ship  the  High  Priest  of  the  Jews  ?  "  "  Not  him,"  re- 
plied the  king,  "  but  the  God,  whose  High  Priest  he  is, 
"  I  worship.  Long  ago,  when  at  Dium  in  Macedonia,  1 
"  saw  in  my  dreams  such  an  one  in  such  an  attire 4  as 
"  this,  who  urged  me  to  undertake  the  conquest  of 
"Persia  and  succeed"  —  "  or,"  added  the  Rabbinical 
account,5  "  it  is  the  same  figure  that  has  appeared  to 
"  me  on  the  eve  of  each  of  my  victories."  Hand  in 
hand  with  the  High  Priest,  and  with  the  priestly  tribe 
running  by  his  side,  he  entered  the  sacred  inclosure,6 
and  offered  the  usual  sacrifice,  saw  with  pleasure  the 
indication  of  the  rise  of  the  Grecian  power  in  the 
prophetic  books,7  granted  free  use  of  their  ancestral 
laws,  and  specially  of  the  year  of  jubilee  inaugurated 
so  solemnly  a  hundred  years  before  under  Nehemiah. 

1  Derenbourg,  42.  6  Derenbourg,  42. 

2  21st    of     Chisleu    (December),         6  Josepbus,    Ant.,  xi.,    lepov,    not 
Derenbourg,  41.  vabs. 

8  Derenbourg,  42.  7  Joscphus,  as  before,  in  bis  ac- 

4  Compare  tbe  dream  in  whieb  be  count  of  Cyrus,  so  now  in  bis  account 

saw  tbe  God  of  Tyre  inviting  him  to  of  Alexander,  mentions  the  book  of 

take  the  city  (Plutarch,  Alex.,  24),  Daniel  by  name  (A?it.,  xi.  5).     See 

and  the  satyr  near  the  fountain —  Lecture  XLI 1 1. 

no  doubt  the  Ras-el-Ain. 


Lect.  XLVII.        HIS  PLACE  IN  RELIGIOUS  HISTOEY.  267 

promised  to  befriend  the  Jewish  settlements  of  Baby- 
lonia and  Media,  and  invited  any  who  were  disposed, 
to  serve  in  his  army  with  the  preservation  of  their  sa- 
cred customs. 

"  And  who  are  these  "  (so  added  the  fiercer  tradition 
of  the  Talmud,  in  which  theological  legend  has  even 
more  deeply  colored  the  historical  event),1  asked  Alex- 
ander, "  who  have  threatened  to  take  away  your 
"  Temple  ?  "  "  They  are  the  Cutheans  now  standing 
"  before  you,"  replied  the  Jewish  High  Priest,  pointing 
to  the  hated  Samaritans.  "  Take  them,"  said  the 
King,  "they  are  in  your  hands."  The  Jews  seized 
their  enemies,  threw  them  on  the  ground,  pierced  their 
heels,  fastened  them  to  the  tails2  of  horses,  which 
dragged  them  over  thorns  and  briars  till  they  reached 
Mount  Gerizim.  A  ploughshare  was  driven  over  the 
Temple  of  Gerizim,  and  the  clay  was  henceforth  ob- 
served as  sacred  to  joy  and  festivity. 

These  narratives  are  obviously  mixed  with  fable, 
but  it  is  probable  that  Alexander  visited  Jerusalem ; 
that  he  paid  his  homage  to  the  God  of  the  Jews  as  he 
had  paid  it  to  the  God  of  the  Tyrians ;  that  the  ri- 
valries of  the  Jews  and  Samaritans  then,  as  of  the 
Greeks  and  Latins  now,  grasped  alike  at  the  protec- 
tion of  this  new  Imperial  power  granted  alternately 
to  each.  But  in  a  higher  point  of  view,  the  romance 
of  the  story  is  not  unworthy  of  the  impor-  His  place  in 
tance  of  this  first  meeting  of  the  Greek  and  history!8 
the  Hebrew  on  the  stage  of  history.  Henceforth, 
Alexander  the  Great  became  the  symbol  of  their 
union.     His  name  came  into  common  Jewish  use  as  a 

1  Derenbourg,  43.  merit  of  Batis,  the  brave  defender  of 

2  This  is  probably  a  distortion  of     Gaza  (Grote's  Greece,  xii.  195). 
the  story  of  Alexander's  brutal  treat- 


268  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII. 

translation  of  Solomon.1  The  philosophy  of  Aristotle 
was  believed  to  have  sprung  from  Alexander's  gift  of 
the  works  of  Solomon.  The  friend  of  Jaddua  becomes 
a  Jewish  proselyte.  The  son  of  Amnion,  with  the 
twisted  horns  appearing  beneath  his  clustering  locks, 
was  transformed  in  the  Mussulman  legends  into  the 
Saintly  Possessor2  of  the  Two  Horns  and  reckoned 
among  the  Apostles  of  God.  These  legends  or  fancies 
were  not  without  their  corresponding  realities.  The 
Orientals  were  not  so  far  wrong  when  they  treated 
Alexander  not  only  as  a  conquerer  but  a  prophet. 
That  capacious  mind,  which,  first  of  the  Greeks,  and 
with  a  wider  grasp  than  even  his  mighty  master 
Aristotle,  conceived  the  idea  of  the  universal  Father- 
hood of  God,  and  the  universal  communion  of  all  good 
men,  was  "  not  far "  from  the  realm  of  those  with 
whom  the  Jew  and  Musselman  have  placed  him. 
"  God,"  he  said,3  "  is  the  common  Father  of  all  men, 
"  especially  of  the  best  men."  Nor  were  these  mere 
words.  They  bore  fruit  in  two  immense  consequences. 
One  was  the  union  of  the  European  and  Asiatic  races 
under  one  Empire,  leading  to  the  spread  of  the  Greek 
language  as  the  common  vehicle  of  communication  in 
the  Eastern,  ultimately  of  the  whole  civilized  world ; 
of  Greek  ideas,  .partly  for  evil  and  partly  for  good, 
into  the  very  recesses  of  the  Semitic  mind.  Of  this 
we  shall  trace  the  course  as  we  proceed.  The  other 
fact  was  the  foundation  of  Alexandria.     It  became  at 

1  See  Lecture  XXVI.  Another  "were  seen,  and  the  man,  to  keep 
explanation  of  the  frequency  of  the  "the  secret,  whispered  it  into  the 
name  of  Alexander  is  given  in  "  well,  round  which  stood  the  reeds 
Kaphall,  i.  50.  "which  revealed  it"     (Mussulman 

2  "Hi  never  allowed  anyone  to  legend). 

•    shave   his    head,    lest    the    horns         8  Plutarch,  Alex.,  27. 
'should    be    seen  —  at    last    they 


Lect.  XL VII.         FOUNDATION   OF  ALEXANDRIA.  269 

once  the  capital  of  the  East,  the  centre  of  the  three 
continents  of  the  ancient  earth,  and  the  point  in  which 
Greek  philosophy  and  Hebrew  religion  were  to  meet 
in  an  indissoluble  union. 

In  the  little  fishing-town  of  Rhacotis,  the  discern- 
ing eye  of  Alexander,  on  his  rapid  Journey  Foundation 
to  the  Oasis1  of  Amnion,  saw  the  possibility  drfa.  'exan~ 
of  creating  that  which  hitherto  the  Eastern  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean  had  entirely  lacked  —  a  mag- 
nificent harbor.  The  low  level  reef  of  the  isle  of 
Pharos2  furnished  the  opportunity  —  when  connected 
with  the  mainland  by  a  mole  —  of  such  a  shelter  for 
ships  as  neither  Tyre  nor  Sidon  nor  Joppa  had  ever 
been  able  to  afford. 

The  first  Ptolemy  did  well  to  name  the  city  not  after 
himself,  but  after  Alexander.  Not  Constantine  was 
more  identified  with  the  city  on  the  shores  of  the  Bos- 
phorus  than  was  Alexander  with  that  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Nile.  His  friend  Hephsestion  became  its  guardian 
hero.  The  military  cloak  of  Alexander  supplied  its 
outline.  It  was  his  own  plan  for  Babylon  resuscitated ; 
even  the  rectangular  streets  of  the  Asiatic  capital  were 
reproduced.  In  the  later  Jewish  phraseology  it  even 
bore  the  name  of  Babylon.3  No  funeral  was  ever  seen 
more  splendid  than  that  which  conveyed  the  remains  of 
the  dead 4  King  from  Chaldgea  in  the  golden  car  drawn 
by  sixty-four  mules,  each  with  its  golden  cover  and 
golden  bells,  across  desert  and  mountain,  through  the 
hills  and  vales  of  Palestine,  till  they  were  deposited  in 
the  tomb  which  gave  to  the  whole  quarter  of  Alexan- 

1  Sharpe's  Egypt,  i.&20,  22S,  241.     scribe   the   island  of    Pharos   (Plu- 

2  Here,  again,  as  at  Tyre  and  Je-     tarcli,  Alex.,  26). 

rusalem,  he  was  guided  by  a  dream.         8  Surenhusius'  Mishna,  v.  240. 
Homer,    he    said,   had   appeared   to         4  Diod.  Sic,  xviii.  21,  27. 
him,  repeating  the  lines  which  de- 


270  ALEXANDRIA-  Lect.  XLV11 

dria  where  it  stood  the  name  of  "  the  Body."  That 
tomb  has  gradually  dwindled  away  to  a  wretched  Mus- 
sulman chapel,  kept  by  an  aged  crone,  who  watches 
over  a  humble  shrine,  called,  "  The  Grave  of  Iskander 
"of  the  Two  Horns,  founder  of  Alexandria."  But 
the  whole  world  was  long  filled,  according  to  the  em- 
phatic saying  of  Demades,  "with  the  odor  of  that 
"interment."1  "The  horn  was  broken,"  as  the  book 
of  Daniel  expressed  it,  "  and  the  four  horns  "  of  the 
four  successors  came  in  its  place;  and  for  the  long 
wearisome  years  through  which  History  passes  with 
repugnance,  and  which  form  perhaps  the  most  lifeless 
and  unprofitable  page  in  the  whole  of  the  Sacred 
Volume,  Asia,  Europe,  and  Africa  resounded  with  their 
wrangles. 

In  this  world's  debate  Palestine  was  the  principal 
stage  across  which  "  the  kings  of  the  South,"  the  Al- 
exandrian Ptolemies,  and  "the  kings  of  the  North,"  2 
the  Seleucidse  from  Antioch,  passed  to  and  fro  with 
their  court  intrigues  and  incessant  armies,  their  Indian 
elephants,  their  Grecian  cavalry,  their  Oriental  pomp. 
It  was,  for  the  larger  part  of  the  century-and-half  that 
succeeded  Alexander's  death,  a  province  of  the  Graeco- 
Egyptian  Kingdom. 

It  was  now  that  new  constellations  of  towns,  some 
Greek  of  which  acquired  an  undying  feme  in  Jewish 
Palestine,  and  Christian  history,  sprang  up,  bearing  in 
their  names  the  mark  of  their  Grecian  origin.3  Judea 
itself  still  remained  entirely  Semitic.  But  in  a  fringe 
all  round  that  sacred  centre  the  Ptolemies  or  the  Seleu- 
cidse, but  chiefly  the  Ptolemies,  left  their  footprints,  if 
not  to  this  day,  at  least  for  centuries. 

1  Grote's  Greece,  xii.  346.  8  Reland,  Palestina,  806. 

8  Dan.  xi.  1-29. 


Lect.  XLVII.  GREEK   CITIES   IN  PALESTINE.  271 

On  the  sea-coast  Gaza  sprang  from  its  ashes,  now  no 
more  a  Philistine,  but  a  Grecian  city.  Close  by  we 
trace,  too,  in  Anthedon  and  Arethusa,  a  Hellenic  City 
of  Flowers,  with  the  reminiscence  of  the  famous  Dorian 
fountain.  The  seaport  of  Joppa  became  to  the  Alex- 
andrian sailors  the  scene  of  the  adventure  of  Perseus 
and  Andromeda.  On  another  rocky  headland  rose  the 
Tower  of  Strato,  some  Grecian  magnate  now  unknown. 
Chief  of  all,  the  old  Canaanitish  fortress  of  Accho  was 
transformed  by  Ptolemy  Philadelphus  or  his  father  into 
"  Ptolemais,"  a  title  which  for  centuries  overlaid  the 
original  name,  once  more  to  reappear  in  modern  times 
as  Acre.1  Beyond  the  Jordan  a  like  metamorphosis 
was  effected  in  the  ancient  capital  of  Amnion,  when 
Rabbah,  after  the  same  Prince,  was  called  Philadelphia. 
In  its  neighborhood  sprang  up  the  new  town  of  Gerasa, 
so-called,  according  to  tradition,  from  the  aged  men 
(gerontes)  whom  Alexander  left  there  as  unable  to  keep 
up  with  his  rapid  march.  Further  north  were  two 
towns,  each  with  its  Macedonian  name2 — one  Dium, 
so  called  from  the  Thracian  city,  where,  according  to 
the  legend,  Alexander  had  seen  in  his  dream  the  figure 
of  Jaddua ;  the  other  Pella,3  from  the  likeness  of  its 
abundant  springs  to  the  well-watered  capital  of  Mace- 
donia. Round  the  southern  extremity  of  the  Lake  of 
Gennesaret  the  Canaanite  Bethshan,  from  the  reminis- 
cence of  its  Scythian  conquerors,  became  Scythopolis, 
with  a  new  legend  ascribing  its  foundation  to  Bacchus ; 
and  Sus  4  easily  changed  itself  into  the  corresponding 
Greek  name  of  Hippos.     High  up  beyond  Dan,  the 

1  Keland,  918.  4  Clermont  Ganneau,  Revue  Arche- 

2  Ibid.,  458.  ologique,  July,  1875. 
8  Ibid.,  924.     There  was  another 

Pella  in  Moab.     Ibid.,  101. 


272  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII. 

romantic  cave  which  overhangs  the  chief  source  of  the 
Jordan  became  the  Sanctuary  of  Pan,  and  the  town 
which  clustered  at  its  foot  acquired,  and  has  never  lost 
(except  for  the  period  of  the  Roman  occupation),  the 
name  of  Paneas. 

Through  these  Hellenic  settlements  it  is  not  surpris- 
Greciaa  mg  that  ever  and  anon  some  story  reached 
travellers.  ^e  outer  worid  0f  the  Jewish  settlement  which 
they  inclosed.  At  one  time  it  was  Hecataeus  of 
Abdera,  the  indefatigable  traveller  who  had  in  his  vast 
journey  included  the  temple  of  Stonehenge  and  the 
temples  of  Thebes  ; 1  who  travelled  with  the  first 
Ptolemy  into  Palestine,  and  saw  with  admiration  the 
sanctuary  at  Jerusalem ;  who  had  heard  how  the  Jews 
in  Alexander's  army  refused  to  join  in  rebuilding  the 
Temple  of  Bel  at  Babylon  ;  who  long  remembered  the 
Jewish  bowman,  Mosollam,  famous  of  all  the  archers  in 
his  day,  who  acted  as  the  guide  of  Hecatgeus'  party2 
by  the  shores  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  showed  at  once  his 
professional  skill,  his  national  courage,  and  his  religious 
superiority  to  the  superstition  of  all  around  him,  by 
shooting  the  bird  from  which  the  soothsayers  were 
drawing  their  auguries.  At  another  time  it  was  Aga- 
tharchides  who  was  struck  with  a  mixture  of  awe  and 
contempt  at  the  rigid  observance  of  the  Sabbath  which 
led  them  to  leave  their  city  unguarded  to  be  taken 
when  on  that  same  expedition  Ptolemy  invaded  Judasa 
and  captured  Jerusalem.3  Most  memorable  of  all,  "  the 
"  great  master  of  all  the  peculiarities  of  nature  and  of 
"  men,  and  the  eager  investigator  of  all  the  varieties 
"  then  pouring  out  of  Asia,  the  mighty  Aristotle  him- 
'  self,  met  with  a  Jew  who  had  descended 4  from  hia 

1  Diod.,  i.  46;  ii.  47.  8  Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  i.  22. 

2  Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  i.  22,  *  Ewald,  v.  247. 


Lect.  XL VII.  THE  CHRONICLES.  273 

ie  mountain  fastnesses  to  the  Hellenized  sea-board  of  his 
"  country,  and  thus  in  his  travels  encountered  and  con- 
"  versed  with  Aristotle  on  the  philosophy  of  Greece, 
"  and  himself  replied  to  the  great  master's  inquiries 
"  on  the  wonders  of  his  own  people."  Questions  and 
answers  are  alike  unrecorded.  But  no  "  imaginary 
"  dialogue  "  can  be  conceived  more  instructive  than 
this  actual  conversation  of  which  the  bare  fact  alone 
remains  in  the  fragment  of  Clearchus,  to  whom  it  was 
"  repeated  by  Aristotle  himself. 

Within  that  inner  circle  of  mountain  fastnesses,  for 
the  long  period  from  Alexander  the  Great  to  The 
Antiochus  Epiphanes,  there  are  but  few  events  Chronicles- 
which  throw  any  light  on  the  religious  history  of  that 
now  secluded  people.  We  discern  the  fact,  slightly, 
yet  certainly  indicated,  that  the  last  book  of  the  Jewish 
annals  which  has  come  down  to  us  in  the  Hebrew 
tongue  was  now  finally  concluded  in  its  present  form. 
The  Book  of  Chronicles,  including,  as  it  doubtless  did, 
in  the  same  group  the  Books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah, 
received  at  this  time  its  latest  touches.  "  Darius  the 
Persian "  is  mentioned  as  belonging  to  an  Empire 
which  had  by  that  time  ceased  to  exist,  and  the  priest- 
ly and  royal  lines  are  continued  down  to  the  con- 
temporaries of  Alexander.1  Of  the  peculiarities  of  the 
Chronicler  we  have  already  spoken.  But  it  is  a  marked 
epoch  in  the  story  of  the  Jewish  race,  when  we  catch 
a  parting  glimpse  of  one  who  has  accompanied  us  so 
long  and  with  such  varying  interest.  We  bade  fare- 
well to  the  compiler  of  the  prophetical  Book  of  Kings 
on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates.  We  bid  farewell  to 
the  compiler  of  the  priestly  "  Chronicles "  under  the 

1  Neh.,  xii.  11-22;  1  Chron.,  iii.  22,  23,  24. 
35 


274  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVTI 

shadow  of  the  Grecian  dominion   in  the  fastness   of 
Jerusalem. 

The  priestly  office  still  continued  in  the  same  corrupt 
The  sons  of  condition  as  under  the  Persian  dominion.  The 
Tobiah.  highest  ambition  of  its  occupants  seems  to 
have  been  the  making  of  colossal  fortunes  by  the  farm- 
ing of  the  revenues  of  the  country,  of  which,  as  Chief 
Magistrate,  the  High  Priest  was  made  the  collector,  for 
the  tribute 1  to  the  Egyptian  King.  Out  of  this  there 
grew  a  rival  ambition  of  the  head  of  a  powerful  clan, 
which,  under  the  name  of  "The  Sons  of  Tobiah," 
long  exercised  sway  both  in  the  Alexandrian  Court  and 
in  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem.  It  would  seem  that  they 
claimed  some  descent  from  the  House  of  David,  and 
the  cleverness  of  their  representative  at  this  time  — 
Joseph,  nephew  of  the  High  Priest  Onias  —  established 
him  in  high  favor  with  Ptolemy  IV.2  It  is  needless  to 
follow  the  course  of  this  earlier  Anastasius.  One  per- 
manent monument  remains  of  his  family.  His  youngest 
son,  Hyrcanus,3  inheritor  of  his  fortunes,  deposited 
them  in  the  bank,4  to  which,  as  in  Greece,  so  in  Judaea, 
the  Temple  lent  itself,  and  settled  himself  as  an  inde- 
pendent freebooting  chief  in  a  fastness  beyond  the 
Jordan.  It  was  a  castle  of  white  marble,  carved  with 
colossal  figures,  and  surrounded  by  a  deep  moat,  and 
in  face  of  it  was  a  cliff  honeycombed  with  a  labj^rinth 
of   caverns.     It   was   named    "  the   Rock." 6      In   this 

1  The  tribute  to  the  foreign  kings  the  troubles  and  the  pretensions  of 
was  made  up  from  the  yearly  poll-tax     Hyrcanus.     The  name  he  regards  as 

>f  the  half-shekel,  called   in   Greek  the  Hellenic  equivalent  of  Johanan 

the   didrachma.     Sharpe's  Egypt,  i.  (ii.  191). 

328.  4  2  Mace.  iii.  11 

2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xii.  4,  2.  6  Josephus  (Ant.,  xii.  4,  11)  calls 
8  Herzfeld  (ii.  435)  supposes  the  it  "  Tyre."    This  surely  must  be  the 

"sons  of  mischief"   and  "the  vis-     Hebrew  Tsur,  which  is  "  rock."    See 


ions 


in  Daniel  xi.  1G,  to  refer  to     Sinai  and  Palestine,  278,  488. 


Lect.  XL VII.  SIMON   THE  JUST.  275 

fantastic  residence  he  reigned  as  an  independent  mag- 
nate amongst  the  neighboring  Arabs,  till  at  last  he  was 
hunted  down  by  the  Syrian  Kings.  But  the  castle  and 
the  rock  still  remain,  and  preserve  the  name  of  Hyr- 
canus,  the  semi- Arabian  chief,  in  the  modern  appella- 
tion of  Arak-el-Emir}  The  fosse,  the  fragments  of  the 
colonnade,  the  entrance-gateway,  with  the  colossal  lions 
sculptured  on  its  frieze,  the  mixture  of  Greek  Ionic 
capitals  with  the  palm-leaved  architecture  as  of  the 
Ptolemaic  temples  at  Phila3,  the  vast  stables  hewn  out 
of  the  adjacent  rock,  all  attest  the  splendor  of  this 
upstart  Prince  —  this  heir,  if  so  be,  of  the  lineage  of 
David. 

Amidst  these  intrigues  and  adventures  there  rises 
one  stately  figure,  the  High  Priest,2  Simon  the  Simon  the 
Just,  towering  above  all  who  came  before  him  Just 
and  all  who  came  after  him  in  that  office,  from  the 
time  of  Zerubbabel  to  the  time  of  the  Maccabees. 
According  to  one  legend  it  was  he  who  encountered 
Alexander  the  Great.  According  to  another  he  was 
the  last  survivor  of  the  members  of  the  Great  Syna- 
gogue. According  to  another  it  was  he  who  warned 
Ptolemy  Philopator  —  the  one  exception  to  the  friendly 
character  of  the  Ptolemsean  princes  —  not  to  enter 
the   Temple.      The    expression   of  his   intention   had 

1  Tristram's  Land  of  Israel,  529.  (47-51)  that  the  Simon  of  Ecclesi- 
Palestine  Exploration  Fund,  Quar-  asticus  was  Simon  the  Just,  and  that 
terly  Statement,  April,  1872.  Mur-  this  Simon  was  Simon  II.  That  Jo- 
ray's  Handbook.  sephus,  who  identifies  Simon  the  Just 

2  There  are  two  high  priests  in  with  Simon  I.,  should  have  been  mis- 
this  period,  both  Simons  and  both  taken,  is  no  more  surprising  than  his 
sons  of  Onias.  It  is  a  question  which  like  error  in  confounding  Ahasuerus 
of  the  two  was  Simon  the  Just  and  with  Artaxerxes,  or  transferrins  San- 
which  of  the  two  was  the  Simon  ballat  from  the  time  of  Nehemiah  to 
described  in  Ecclesiasticus.     Deren-  the  time  of  Alexander. 

bourg   has    conclusively   established 


276  ALEXANDRIA.  Leci.  XLVIL 

thrown  (so  it  was  said)  the  whole  city  into  consterna- 
tion. From  the  densely  packed  multitude  there  went 
up  a  cry  so  piercing  that  it  would  have  seemed  as  if 
the  very  walls  and  foundations  of  the  city  shared  in 
it.  In  the  midst  of  the  tumult  was  heard  the  prayer 
of  Simon,  invoking  the  All-seeing  God.  And  then, 
like  a  reed  broken  by  the  wind,  the  Egyptian  King 
fell  on  the  pavement1  and  was  carried  out  by  his 
guards. 

All  the  traditions  combine  in  representing  Simon  as 
closing  the  better  clays  of  Judaism.  Down  to  his  time 
it  was  always  the  right  hand  of  the  High  Priest  that 
drew  the  lot  of  the  consecrated  goat :  after  his  time 
the  left  and  right  wavered  and  varied.  Down  to  his 
time  the  red  thread  round  the  neck  of  the  scape-goat 
turned  white,  as  a  sign  that  the  sins  of  the  people 
were  forgiven  ;  afterwards,  its  change  was  quite  un- 
certain. The  candlestick  at  the  entrance  of  the 
Temple  burned  in  his  time  without  fail ;  afterwards  it 
often  went  out.  Two  faggots  a  day  sufficed  to  keep 
the  flame  on  the  altar  alive  in  his  time  :  afterwards 
piles  of  wood  were  insufficient.  In  his  last  year  he 
was  said  to  have  foretold  his  death,  from  the  omen 
that  whereas  on  all  former  occasions  he  was  accom- 
panied into  the  Holy  of  Holies  on  the  Day  of  Atone- 
ment to  the  entrance  only  by  an  old  man  clothed  in 
white  from  head  to  foot,  in  that  year  his  companion 
was  attired  in  black,  and  followed  him  as  he  went  in 
and  came  out.  These  were  the  forms  in  which  the 
later    Jewish   belief  expressed    the    sentiment   of  his 

1  3  Mace.  i.  28,  29;  ii.  1,  21,  24.  of    another   Egyptian    potentate, — 

Comp.   2  Mace.  ii.  25.     An  exactly  Ibrahim    Pacha,  —  who   was    struck 

similar  story  was  related  to  me  by  down  in  like  manner  on  attempting 

the  Imam  of  the  Mosque  of  Hebron  to  enter  the  shrine  of  Isaac. 


Lect.  XLVII.  SIMON  THE   JUST.  277 

transcendent  worth,  and  of  the  manifold  changes  which 
were  to  follow  him.  But  the  more  authentic  indica- 
tions convey  the  same  impression.  The  very  title  of 
"  the  Just " 1  expressed  the  feeling,  as  always,  that 
he  stood  alone  in  an  untoward  age.  The  description 
which  has  come  clown  to  us  by  his  contemporaries, 
in  whose  judgment2  he  worthily  closed  the  long  suc- 
cession of  ancient  heroes,  is  that  of  a  venerable  per- 
sonage, who  belonged  to  a  nobler  age  and  would  be 
seen  again  no  more.  They  remembered  his  splendid 
appearance  when  he  came  out  from  behind  the  sacred 
curtain  of  the  Holy .  of  Holies  into  the  midst  of  the 
people  as  they  crowded  the  Temple  on  the  Great 
Fast-day.  It  was  like  the  morning  star  bursting  from 
a  cloud,  or  the  moon  in  her  fulness.  It  was  like 
the  sunlight  striking  the  golden  pinnacles  of  the 
Temple,  or  the  rainbow  in  the  stormy  cloud.  It 
was  as  the  freshly-blown  rose,  or  the  lilies  clustering 
by  the  stream,  the  olive  laden  with  fruit  or  the  fir- 
tree  reaching  to  the  sky,  with  the  fragrance  as  of 
frankincense,  with  the  refinement  as  of  a  golden  vessel 
set  with  gems.  Every  gesture  was  followed  with  ad- 
miration. To  the  gorgeous  robes  of  his  office  he  gave 
additional  grace  by  the  way  he  wore  them.  When  he 
stood  among  the  priests  he  towered  above  them  like 
a  cedar  in  a  grove  of  palms.  When  he  poured  out  the 
libations  or  offered  the  offerings,  the  blast  of  the  silver 
trumpets,  the  loud  shout  of  the  people,  the  harmony 
of  the  various  voices,  the  profound  prostrations,  were 
all  in  keeping,  and  his  final  benediction  was  an  event 
in  the  memory  of  those  who  had  received  it. 

1  Thus  Noah,  Gen.  vi.  9;  Joseph     sephus  (in  Eus.  H.  E.,  ii.  23).     Be- 
in  the  Koran,  xii.  46,  James  in  Jo-     renbourg,  47. 

2  Ecclus.,  1.  1-21. 


278  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XL VII. 

On  the  material  fabric  of  liie  city  and  Temple  he 
left  his  permanent  traces  in  the  repairs  and  fortifica- 
tion and  elevation  of  the  walls;  in  its  double  cloister, 
and  the  brazen  plates  with  which  he  encased  the  huge 
laver  of  ablutions.  The  respect  which  he  won  from 
Antiochus1  the  Great  procured  from  him  the  timber 
and  stone  for  the  work.  The  precept  which  survived 
of  his  teaching  was :  "  There  are  three  foundations 
"of  the  world  —  the  Law,  the  Worship  (and  herein 
"  consisted  his  peculiar  teaching),  and  Benevolence." 
In  accordance  with  this  gentle  humanity  is  the  one 
anecdote  handed  down  of  his  private  thoughts.  "  I 
"never,"  he  said,  "could  endure  to  receive  the  mo- 
"  nastic  dedication  of  the  Nazarites.  Yet  once  I  made 
"  an  exception.  There  came  a  youth  from  the  south 
"  to  consecrate  himself.  I  looked  at  him  —  his  eyes 
"  were  beautiful,  his  air  magnificent,  his  long  hair  fell 
"  clustering  in  rich  curls  over  his  face.  '  Why,'  I 
"  asked  him,  '  must  you  shave  off  the»e  splendid 
"  '  locks  ?  '  <  I  was  a  shepherd  of  my  father's  flocks,' 
"  he  replied,  '  in  my  native  village.  One  day,  drawing 
"  '  water  at  the  well,  I  saw  with  undue  complacency 
"  <  my  reflection  in  the  water.  I  should  have  given 
"  'way  to  a  wicked  inclination  and  have  been  lost. 
"  '  I  said :  "  Wicked  one,  wilt  thou  be  proud  of  that 
"  '  "  which  does  not  belong  to  thee,  who  art  but  worms 
"  '  "  and  dust  ?  0  God,  I  will  cut  off  these  curls  for 
"  '  "  the  honor  of  Heaven."  '  "  Then  said  Simon,  "  I 
"  embraced  his  head  and  exclaimed :  '  Would  that 
"  '  there  were  many  such  Nazarites  in  Israel.'  " 

There  was  yet  one  other  character  of  this  Ptole- 
maean  period  of  Palestine,  Joshua,  the  son  of  Sirach 
—  contemporary  or  nearly  contemporary  of  Simon  — 

1  Dorenbourtr,  47.  2  Ibid. 


Lect.  XLVII.  EGYPTIAN   COLONIES.  279 

who  was  conspicuous  in  his  time  at  once  as  the  great 
student  of  the  sacred  Hebrew  literature,  as  the  col- 
lector  of  the  grave  and  short  sentences  of  the  wise 
men  who  went  before  him,  and  as  himself  uttering 
"  some  things  of  his  own,  full  of  understanding  and 
"judgment."  But  the  characteristics  of  his  work 
must  be  reserved  for  its  appearance  in  the  Greek  form 
in  which  alone  it  is  now  known. 

We  turn  from  these  brief  and  disjointed  notices  of 
the  internal  history  of  Palestine  under  the  Jewish  coi- 
Ptolemies  to  the  important  Jewish  settlement  Egypt.m 
more  directly  connected  with  them  in  Egypt.  It  was 
close  along1  the  sea-shore,  directly  to  the  east  of 
Alexandria  —  probably  with  a  view  to  the  conven- 
ience of  their  ablutions  in  the  Mediterranean  —that 
the  Jewish  colonists  chiefly  resided  ;  and  to  this  day 
the  burial-ground  of  their  race  is  on  the  sandy  hillocks 
in  the  same  situation.  They  were  in  such  numbers 
as  to  be  known  by  the  name  of  "  The  Tribe."2  They 
retained  the  privileges  alleged  to  have  been  granted 
by  Alexander,  as  on  a  level  with  the  Macedonian  set- 
tlers. The  commercial  enterprise  of  the  race,  nevei 
since  extinct,  now  for  the  first  time  found  an  outlet 
They  gradually  became  a  separate  community  undei 
their  own  chief,  entitled  Ethnarch  or  Alabarch,  and 
represented  more  than  a  third  of  Alexandria,  with 
a  council  corresponding  to  that  which  ultimately  ruled 
at  Jerusalem.3 

This  was  the  only  settlement  of  permanent  interest. 
Other  colonies  may  be  traced  here  and  there,  under  the 
Ptolomsean  rule,  in  insulated  fragments.  One  was  the 
band  of  Samaritans,4  who,  still  keeping  up  their  deadly 

1  Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  ii.  4.  »  See  Herzfeld,  Geschichte,  iii.  437 

2  Ibid.  438.  445,  446. 

4  Josephus,  Ant.,  xi.  8. 


280  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XL VII 

feud,  retired  to  the  Thebaid.  Another  was  the  group 
of  anchorites  by  the  lake  Mareotis,  the  forerunners  of 
the  parents  of  Christian  monasticism.  Another  power- 
ful community  was  settled  at  Cyrene  — just  become  a 
dependency  on  Egypt  —  destined  to  react  on  the  nation 
in  Palestine 1  by  their  special  synagogue  at  Jerusalem. 

Another,  still  in  the  future,  but  drawn  by  the  same 
Leontop-  friendly  influence  of  the  Grasco-Egj^ptian  cly- 
olis-  nasty  was  the  settlement  at  Leontopolis.  When, 

in  the  subsequent  troubles  of  Palestine,  it  seemed  that 
the  Temple  itself  would  perish,  one  of  the  High  Priestly 
family,  Nechoniah  or  Coniah,  in  Greek  Onias  —  fled  to 
Egypt,  and  begged  the  loan  of  a  deserted  temple  of 
Pasht,2  the  Cat-Goddess,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Heliop- 
olis.  There,  with  the  military  experience  which  he 
may  have  acquired  in  heading  a  band  of  troops  in  one 
of  the  Egyptian  civil  wars,  he  built  a  fortress 3  and  a 
temple,  which,  although  on  a  smaller4  scale,  was  to 
rival  that  of  Jerusalem,  where  he  and  his  sons,  keeping 
up  the  martial  traditions  of  the  Levitical  tribe,  formed 
a  powerful  body  of  soldiery,  and  assumed  the  name  and 
habits  of  a  camp.6     The  general  style  of  the  sanctuary 

1  Acts  ii.  1;  vi.  1;  Herzfeld,  iii.  locality  in  any  other  part  of  Egypt. 
321.  This  solution  had  occurred  to  me  be- 

2  The  name  of  Leontopolis,  in  con-  fore  I  saw  it  worked  out  in  HerzfeH, 
nection  with  the  Temple  of  Onias,  iii.  oG2.  It  is  possible,  however,  that 
probably  arose  from  this.  Every  it  may  have  been  so  called  from  sa- 
Temple  of  Pasht  (called  by  the  cred  lions  which,  at  the  more  cer- 
Greeks  Bubastis)  was  (as  is  familiar  tainly  ascertained  Leontopolis,  were 
to  every  visitor  to  Thebes)  a  men-  kept  in  separate  houses  and  had 
agerie  of  cats,  living,  embalmed,  or  songs  sung  to  them  during  then 
in  stone.  This  to  the  Greeks,  as  to  meals.  iElian,  xii.  7;  Wilkinson,  v 
the  Arabs,  who  give  one  name  to  the  173;  iv.  296. 

two  animals,  may  well  have  caused  8  Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  ii.  5. 

this  sanctuary  of  Pasht  to  have  been  4  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii. 

called  the  City  of  Lions,  and  there-  5  Herzfeld,  iii.  462. 
fore  we  have   no  need  to  seek  the 


Lect.  xlvii.  leontopolis.  281 

was  (apparently)  not  Jewish  but  Egyptian.  A  huge 
tower  —  perhaps  equivalent  to  the  great  gateway  of 
Egyptian  temples1 — rose  to  the  height  of  sixty  cubits. 
There  were  no  obelisks,  but  it  was  approached  by  the 
usual  long  colonnades2  of  pillars.  The  altar  alone  re- 
sembled that  of  the  Jewish  temple.  But  instead  of  the 
candlestick  a  golden  chandelier  was  suspended  from  the 
roof  by  a  golden  chain.  A  circuit  of  brick  walls,  as  in 
the  adjacent  sanctuary  of  Heliopolis,  inclosed  it,  and 
the  ruins  of  these  it  is  that  still  form  the  three  rugged 
sandhills  known  by  the  name  of  "  the  Mounds  of  the 
"  Jews."  It  was  a  bold  attempt  to  form  a  new  centre 
of  Judaism ;  and  the  attempt  was  supported  by  one  of 
the  earliest  efforts  to  find  in  the  poetic  language  of  the 
ancient  prophets  a  local,  prosaic,  and  temporary  applica- 
tion. In  the  glowing  prediction 3  of  the  homage  which 
Egypt  should  hereafter  pay  to  Israel,  Isaiah  had  ex- 
pressed the  hope  that  there  should  be  five  cities  in 
Egypt  speaking  the  language  of  Canaan  and  revering 
the  Sacred  Name,  and  that  one  of  these  should  be  the 
sacred  City  of  the  Sun.  What  had  been  indicated  then 
as  the  most  surprising  triumph  —  the  conversion  of 
the  chief  sanctuary  of  the  old  Egyptian  worship  to  the 
true  religion  —  was  seized  by  Onias  as  a  proof  that  in 
the  neighborhood,  if  not  within  the  walls,  of  the  Sun 
City  —  which  the  Greeks  called  Heliopolis,  and  which 
the  Egyptians  called  On  —  there  should  rise  a  temple 
of  Jehovah.     The  very  name  of  On  was  a  likeness  to 

1  Josephus,  B.  /.,  vii.  10,  3.  Herzfeld  (iii.  561)  gives  the  expla- 

2  This  must  be  the  origin  of  the  nation  as  above.  Gesenius  supposes 
statement  of  Apion  (Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  it  to  be  an  interpolation  by  Onias. 
ii.  2)  and  of  Strabo  xvii.  Wbiston    (on    Josephus,    Ant.,   xiii. 

8  Isa.  xix.  18,  19.      "The  city  of  3,   1),  with   his   usual  honesty  and 

'the  sun" — wrongly  translated  in  eccentricity,  supposes  Onias's  inter- 

the  A.  V.  "  the  city  of  destruction."  pretation  to  be  correct. 
36 


282  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII 

his  own  name  of  Onias.  The  passage  in  Isaiah  was  yet 
further  changed  to  give  the  city  a  name  more  exactly 
resembling  the  title  of  Jerusalem.  As  the  City  of  the 
Palestinian  sanctuary  was  called  the  Holy  City,  the 
City  of  Holiness,  so  this  was  supposed  to  have  been 
foreseen  as  the  Righteous  city  —  the  City  of  Right- 
eousness.1 It  was,  moreover,  close  within  the  view  of 
that  sacred  college  where,  according  to  Egyptian  tra- 
dition, Moses  himself  had  studied.  But  a  worship  and 
a  system  so  elaborately  built  up  on  doubtful  etymol- 
ogies and  plays  on  ambiguous  words  was  not  destined 
to  long  endurance  ;  and,  although  an  ample  patrimony 
was  granted  by  the  Egyptian  kings  for  the  endowment 
of  this  new  Pontificate,  and  although  the  territory 
round  was  long  called  the  "  Land  of  Onias," 2  and  the 
sanctuary  lasted  for  three  centuries,  it  passed  away 
under  the  pressure  of  the  Roman 3  government,  and  left 
no  permanent  trace  even  on  the  Alexandrian  Jews. 
The  failure  of  such  a  distorted  prediction  is  a  likeness 
of  what  may  be  in  store  for  equally  fanciful  appli- 
cations of  sacred  words  and  doubtful  traditions  in  more 
modern  times. 

It  may  be  that  round 4  this  centre  of  ancient  Jewish 
traditions,  secluded  on  the  border  of  the  desert  from  the 
great  world  of  Alexandria,  was  gathered  the  opposition 
to  the  Grecian  learning,  which  we  faintly  discern  in  the 
next  century.  But  it  had  only  a  local  and  sectarian 
existence.  The  flow  of  the  religious  life  of  the  new 
story  of  "  Israel  in  Egypt "  rolled  on  regardless  of  this 
artificial  and  insulated  sanctuary.     The  presiding  ge- 

1  This  appears  in  the  LXX.  trans-         8  Josephus,  B.  J.,  vii.  10,  4. 
lation  of  Isa.  xix.  18,  19,  ir6kis  'Ao-eSeK.         *  Nicolas,  842. 

2  The  whole  question  is  ably  dis- 
cussed in  Herzfeld,  iii.  556-564. 


Lect.  XL VII.  THE   PTOLEMIES.  283 

nius  of  Egyptian  Judaism  was  not  the  priestly  house  of 
Onias,  but  the  royal  house  of  Ptolemy. 

Over  these  Jewish  colonists,  as  over  their  native 
Egyptian  subjects,  the  Ptolemies,  at  least  for  The 
the  first  four  reigns,  ruled  with  beneficent ptoIemies- 
toleration.  The  Egyptian  priesthood,  after  the  hard 
dominion  of  the  Persian  iconoclasts,  welcomed  them  as 
deliverers.  The  temples  were  restored  or  rebuilt  after 
the  antique  model.  The  names  of  the  Grecian  Kings 
and  Queens  were  carved  in  hieroglyphics,  and  their 
figures  painted  on  the  Temple  walls  in  the  disguise  of 
the  Pharaohs.  And  as  to  the  Egyptians  they  became 
as  Egyptians,  to  the  Jews  they  became  almost  as  Jews1 

—  sending  their  accustomed  sacrifice  to  the  Temple  of 
Jerusalem,  and  patronizing  with  lands  and  privileges 
the  Temple  of  Leontopolis.  The  Museum  with  its 
unique  Library,  the  scholars  who  frequented  the  court 

—  Euclid  the  geometrician,  Apelles  the  painter,  Era- 
tosthenes the  grammarian  —  brought  the  Grecian  learn- 
ing to  the  very  doors  of  the  Israelite  community.2  In 
this  fostering  atmosphere  there  sprang  up  those  in- 
fluences which  Alexandria  exercised  over  the  Jewish, 
and  thus  over  the  Christian,  Church  for  ever. 

The  first  was  the  translation  of  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures into  Greek  —  the  rise  of  what  may  properly  be 
termed  the  Greek  Bible. 

As  the  meeting  of  the  Greek  Empire  with  the  Jewish 

1  The   one   exception  is  Ptolemy  ing  the  Temple  by  Simon  the  Just; 

Philopator,  whose  endeavor  to  enter  he  is  compelled  to  acknowledge  the 

the  Temple,  and  whose  employment  rights  of  the  Alexandrian  Jews  by 

of  tho  Indian  punishment  of  tram-  the  reluctance  of  the  elephants ;  and 

pling  under  the  feet  of  enraged  ele-  this  was  commemorated  by  a  festival 

phants,    is    the    subject    of    the   3d  like  that  of  Purim.     See  Ewald,  v. 

Book  of  Maccabees.    But  even  these  468. 

incidents  terminate  happily  for  the  2  Herzfeld,     iii.     446-458.      See 

Jews.     He  is  restrained  from  enter-  Sharpe's  Egypt,  vii. 


284  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XL VII. 

nation  is  presented  to  us  in  the  legend  of  Alexander's 
The  interview  with  Jaddua,  so  the  meeting  of  the 

filST nt  two  sacred  languages  of  Greek  and  Hebrew 
is  presented  to  us  in  the  legend  of  the  Seventy  Trans- 
lators. It  was  believed  two  centuries  later  —  and  how- 
ever much  the  details  have  been  shaken  by  recent  crit- 
icism, the  main  fact  is  not  doubted  —  that  in  the  reign 
of  the  second  Ptolemy  the  translation  of  the  Pentateuch 
into  Greek  was  undertaken  at  Alexandria.  It  is,  per- 
haps, most  probable  that  it  sprang  up  spontaneously  to 
supply  the  wants  of  the  Alexandrian  Jews.  But  the 
Jewish  community  would  not  be  satisfied  with  this 
homely  origin.  The  story  took  two  forms.  One  was 
that  King  Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  wishing  to  discover 
the  difference  between  the  Jews  and  the  Samaritans, 
summoned *  five  translators  —  three  representing  the 
Samaritans,  one  Jew,  and  one  assessor.  The  Samaritans 
undertook  the  Pentateuch,  the  Jew  the  later  Books, 
and  the  King  approved  the  Samaritan  version.  This 
was,  doubtless,  the  Samaritan  tradition.  It  points  to 
the  gradual  growth  of  the  work.  It  also  may  connect 
itself  with  the  venerable  High  Priest 2  Hezekiah,  whom 
Hecatoeus  met  in  Egypt,  and  who  appears  to  have  been 
the  chief  of  the  sacerdotal  order  not  in  Jerusalem  but 
in  Samaria. 

The  larger  story 3  is  that  of  which  the  full  account  is 

1  The  number  5  also  appears  in  Samaritan  high  priest  in  Alexan- 
the  Talmudic  traditions  (Sopherim,  der's  time  was  Hezekiah;  (3)  that 
i.  7),  quoted  in  Herzfeld,  iii.  536.  Ileeataeus  never  distinguishes  be- 
Two  names  were  connected  with  tween  the  Jews  and  Samaritans, 
the  work  by  tradition,  — Aristobulus  8  "  The  letter  of  Aristeas  to  Phi- 
with  Exodus,  Lysimachus  with  Es-  "  locrates  "  is  given  in  Hody,  De 
ther  (Griitz,  iii.  35).  Bibliorum    Textibus    Originalihus,   p. 

2  Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  Herzfeld  (iii.  i.-xxvi.  For  the  discussion  of  de- 
538)  founds  this  conjecture  on  the  tails  see  ibid.  1-9;  Ewald,  v.  249; 
facts  (1)  that  no  Jewish  Hezekiah  Kuenen,  iii.  171;  Herzfeld,  iii.  54& 
in  known  at  this  time;  (2)  that  the 


Lect.  XLVn.  THE   SEPTUAGINT.  285 

given  in  the  letter  ascribed  to  Aristeas,  a  courtier  of 
Ptolemy  II.  This  account  rose  above  the  level  of  the 
sectarian  differences  of  Jew  and  Samaritan,  and  at- 
tached itself  to  the  wide  sympathies  of  the  great 
patrons  of  Gentile  literature.  Ptolemy  Philadelphus 
(thus  ran  the  tale)  was  resolved  to  enrich  his  new  li- 
brary by  so  important  a  treasure  as  an  intelligible  ver- 
sion of  the  sacred  books  of  so  large  a  class  of  his  sub- 
jects. Seventy-two  delegates  were  sent  from  the  High 
Priest  at  Jerusalem  —  it  may  be,  as  in  the  story,  so  as 
to  give  six  from  each  of  the  twelve  tribes,  or  in  order 
to  correspond  to  the  sum  total  of  the  Jewish  Council, 
or  in  accordance  wTith  the  mystic  number  which  per- 
vades this  and  other  Eastern  stories.1 .  A  long  catalogue 
existed  of  the  splendid  tables,  cisterns,  and  bowls,  which 
Josephus 2  describes  as  if  he  had  seen  them,  and  which 
are  said  to  have  been  sent  by  Ptolemy  at  this  time 
as  presents  to  conciliate  the  Jewish  High  Priest  to  the 
work.  A  local  tradition  long  pointed  out  the  island  of 
the  Pharian  lighthouse  as  the  scene  of  their  labors. 
There,  it  was  believed,  they  pursued  their  work,  with- 
drawn in  that  seagirt  fortress  from  the  turmoil  of  the 
streets  of  Alexandria,  and  with  the  opportunity  of  per- 
forming every  morning  their  religious  ablutions  in  the 
sea  which  washed  their  threshold  —  and  on  the  shore 
of  which,  as  late  as  the  second  century,  were  shown  the 
remains  of  the  seventy  3  or  the  thirty-six  cells  in  which 
the  translators  had  been  lodged,  and  in  which  (so  the 
later  Alexandrian  tradition  maintained)  each  produced 
by  miracle  exactly  the  same  inspired  version  as  all  the 
rest,  without  one  error  or  contradiction. 

1  See  Ewald,  v.  252.  speaks  of  thirty-six  cells,  in  which 

2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xii.  2,  7,  8,  9.        they    were    lodged,    two    and    two, 
8  Justin    (Cohort,   ad    Grcecos,    c.     with   two   scribes   to   each    (Corap. 

84)  saw  the  seventy  cells.     Epipha-     Irenseus,  Adv.  Hcer.,  iii.  24). 
D6B,  De  Pond,  el  Mens.,  e.  vii.  viii.) 


286  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XL VII 

Like  all  such  incidents  of  the  contact  between  a 
narrower  and  a  broader  civilization,  the  event  itself 
was  by  different  portions  or  at  different  times  of  the 
Jewish  community  invested  with  totally  contrary  as- 
pects. 

On  the  one  hand,  it  was  regarded  as  a  great  calam- 
ity,1 equal  to  that  of  the  worship  of  the  Golden  Calf. 
The  day  on  which  it  was  accomplished  was  believed  to 
have  been  the  beginning  of  a  preternatural  darkness 
of  three  days'  duration  over  the  whole  world,  and  was 
commemorated  as  a  clay  of  fasting  and  humiliation.  It 
needs  but  slight  evidence  to  convince  us  that  such  a 
feeling  more  or  less  widely-spread  must  have  existed. 
It  is  the  same  instinct  which  to  this  honr  makes  it  a 
sin,  if  not  an  impossibility,  in  the  eyes  of  a  devout 
Mussulman  to  translate  the  Koran  ;  which  in  the  Chris- 
tian Church  assailed  Jerome  with  the  coarsest  vitupera- 
tion for  venturing  on  a  Latin  version  which  differed 
from  the  Greek ;  which  at  the  Reformation  regarded  it 
as  a  heresy  to  translate  the  Latin  Scriptures  into  the 
languages  of  modern  Europe  ;  and  which,  in  England, 
has  in  our  own  days  regarded  it  in  the  English  Church 
as  a  dangerous  innovation  to  revise  the  authorised  ver- 
sion of  the  seventeenth  century,  or  in  the  Roman 
Church  to  correct  the  barbarous  dialect  of  the  Douay 
translation  of  the  Vulgate,  or  to  admit  of  any  errors  in 
the  text  or  in  the  rendering  of  the  Vulgate  itself.  In 
one  and  all  of  these  cases  the  reluctance  has  sprung 
from  the  same  tenacious  adherence  to  ancient  and 
sacred  forms  —  from  the  same  unwillingness  to  admit  of 

1  The  fast-day  was  the  8th  of  Te-  216.     The  Samaritans  took  the  same 

let  (January).     See  the  quotations  view,  on  account  of  their  hatred  of 

'rotn  the  Talmud  and  the  arguments  the  Jewish  translation  (Herzfeld,  iii. 

apon  their  date  in  Kuenen,  iii.  214-  537). 


Lect.  xlvii.  the  septuagint.  287 

the  dislodgment  even  of  the  most  flagrant  inaccuracies 
when  once  familiarized  by  established  use.  But  in  al- 
most all  these  cases,  except  perhaps  the  Koran,  this 
sentiment  has  been  compelled  to  yield  to  the  more 
generous  desire  of  arriving  at  the  hidden  meaning  of 
sacred  truth,  and  of  making  that  truth  more  widely 
known.  So  it  was  in  the  most  eminent  degree  in  the 
case  of  the  Septuagint.  The  very  story,1  fictitious  as 
it  may  be,  of  the  splendor  of  the  reception  of  the  trans- 
lators at  Alexandria  indicates  the  pride  which  was 
taken  in  the  work.  The  eagerness  of  the  tradition 
to  connect  the  translation  with  the  Grecian  king  and 
his  universal  library  shows  how  gladly  it  was  welcomed 
as  a  bridge  between  the  Jewish  and  the  Gentile  world  ; 
the  fantastic  addition  which  was  made  in  Christian 
times  of  the  preternatural  inspiration  of  the  seventy 
translators,  shows  how  readily  the  new  takes  the  place 
of  the  old,  and  exhibits  in  the  most  striking  form  the 
transference,  wrhich  has  again  and  again  occurred,  of 
the  same  reverence,  it  may  be  even  of  the  same  super- 
stition for  the  new  version  as  had  formerly  clung  with 
exclusive  attachment  to  the  old. 

If  ever  there  was  a  translation  which,  by  its  impor- 
tance, rose  to  a  level  with  the  original,  it  was  r 
this.  It  was  not  the  original  Hebrew  but  the  p°rtance- 
Septuagint  translation  through  which  the  religious 
truths  of  Judaism  became  known  to  the  Greek  and  the 
Roman.  It  was  the  Septuagint  which  was  the  Bible 2 
of  the  Evangelists  and  Apostles  in  the  first  century, 
and  of  the  Christian  Church  for  the  first  age  of  its  ex- 


1  The  probability,   amounting  al-  for  its  connection  with  the  Samari- 

wiost  to  certainty,  is  that  the  Pen-  tans,  see  Ewald,  v.  253. 

tateuch  alone  was  translated  under  2  See   Roberts,   Discussion  on  thi 

Ptolemy  Philadelphus.     For  this  and  Language  of  Palestine,  292. 


288  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII. 

istenee,  which  is  still  the  only  recognized  authorized 
text  of  the  Eastern  Church,  and  the  basis  of  the  only 
authorized  text  of  the  Latin  Church.  Widely  as  it 
differs  from  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  in  form,  in  sub- 
stance, in  chronology,  in  language  ;  unequal,  imper- 
fect, grotesque  as  are  its  renderings,  it  has  nevertheless, 
through  large  periods  of  ecclesiastical  history,  rivalled, 
if  not  superseded,  those  Scriptures  themselves.  This 
substitution  was,  no  doubt,  in  great  measure  based  on 
the  fable  of  the  miraculous  accuracy  of  the  translation, 
and  has  led  to  the  strangest  theological  confusions  in 
the  treatment  of  the  Bible  by  the  older  Churches  — 
which  thus  claim  for  two  contradictory  texts  the  same 
authority,  and  avowedly  prefer  the  translation  to  the 
original.  But  still,  on  the  whole,  in  the  triumph  of 
the  Septuagint  the  cause  of  freedom,  of  criticism,  o{ 
charity  triumphed  also.  No  rigid  requirement  of  literai 
exactness  can  stand  in  the  presence  of  the  fact  that 
apostles  or  apostolic  men  appealed  for  their  arguments 
to  a  translation  so  teeming  with  acknowledged  mis- 
takes. No  criticism  need  fear  to  handle  freely  the 
Sacred  Volume,  in  which  the  Alexandrian  translators 
ventured  on  such  bold  variations,  accommodations,  omis- 
sions, and  insertions,  with  the  applause  of  the  Christian 
world  from  Irena3us  to  Augustine.  Whatever  religious 
scruple  is  felt  at  circulating  occasional  errors,  in  the 
hope  of  inculcating  the  general  truth  with  which  they 
have  been  entangled,  should  disappear  before  the  ex- 
ample of  the  authoritative  and  universal  use,  in  early 
times,  of  the  Septuagint,  which  differs  far  more  widely 
from  the  original,  and  is  far  more  deeply  imbued  with 
the  natural  infirmity  of  translators,  than  any  other  ver- 
sion of  the  Bible  that  has  ever  since  appeared. 

Again,  the    gradual    completion   of  the   translation, 


Lect.  XL VII.  THE   SEPTUAGINT.  289 

dragging  its  slow  length  along  for  at  least  two  centu- 
ries, is  an  encouragement  to  the  laborious  ef-  Its  pecu. 
forts  of  modern  scholars,  each  adding  something  hanties- 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  preceding  time.  The  use  to 
which  the  Seventy  turned  their  knowledge  of  Egyptian 
localities  and  customs  is  a  faint,  yet  sufficient  stimulus, 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures,  to  the  duty  of 
seeking  light  far  and  near.  The  honest  silence  with 
which,  when  the  Greek  translators  stumble  upon  He- 
brew words,  such  as  those  describing  the  furniture  of 
the  Temple,  or  the  tunes  of  the  Psalms,  they  hold 
their  pens,  and  leave  the  unintelligible  phrases  in  their 
native  obscurity  unexplained,  is  an  example  of  the 
modest  love  of  truth,  capable  of  confessing  its  own 
ignorance  —  a  modesty  such  as  many  translators  and 
interpreters  have  grievously  lacked.  If  "  the  noble 
"  army  of  translators,"  as  they  have  been  sometimes 
called,  may  look  with  affectionate  veneration  on  Je- 
rome's cell  of  Bethlehem,  on  Luther's  study  in  the 
Castle  of  the  Wartburg,  on  the  Jerusalem  Chamber, 
where  twice  over  the  majestic  language  of  the  English 
Bible  has  been  revised,  yet  the  place  of  their  most 
sacred  pilgrimage  should  be  the  narrow  rocky  islet  of 
the  Alexandrian  harbor,  where  was  kindled  a  brighter 
«ind  more  enduring  beacon  in  the  intellectual  and  re- 
ligious sphere  even  than  the  world-renowned  Pharos, 
which  in  the  maritime  world  has  been  the  parent  of 
all  the  lights  that  from  shore  to  shore  and  sea  to 
sea  have  guided  the  mariners  of  two  thousand  years. 
We  do  not  propose  to  follow  their  labor  into  detail, 
Dr  to  give  the  various  instances  of  the  liberties  taken 
with  the  sacred  text,  lengthening  the  chronology  to 
suit   the   more    exacting   claims  of  Egyptian   science, 

37 


290  ALEXANDRIA  Lect.  XLVU 

softening  the  anthropomorphic  representations  of  the 
Divinity  to  meet  the  requirements  of  Grecian  philos- 
ophy. 

One  example  alone  shall  be  given  of  the  connection 
of  the  translation  with  the  Alexandrian  Court  and  with 
Hellenic  culture.  There  was  a  tradition  in  the  Tal- 
mud that  in  the  Pentateuch,1  in  rendering  the  word 
Arnebeth  ("  hare  ')  not  by  lagos  (the  usual  Greek 
word  for  hare)  but  by  dasypus  (hairy-foot),  the  Greek 
translators  were  influenced  or  controlled  by  the  desire 
to  avoid  so  homely  a  use  of  the  name  of  Lagus,  the 
father  of  the  Ptolemaean  dynasty.  The  mere  suppo- 
sition of  such  a  courtly  concession  on  so  minute  a 
point  implies  a  dependence  on  the  Greek  sovereign, 
before  which  grows  pale  even  the  dedication  of  the 
Authorized  English  Version  to  King  James  I.,  or  Sixtus 
V.'s  imperious  preface  to  the  Vulgate.  But  though  it 
is  hardly  necessary  or  probable  to  resort  to  so  strange 
a  hypothesis,  the  real  explanation  leads  us  to  the  inter- 
vention of  another  influence  on  the  text  far  more 
reasonable  and  equally  curious.  The  substitution  of 
the  word  dasypus  for  lagos  was  not  uncommon  at  this 
time,  but  for  its  frequency  there  was  a  cause  more 
interesting  than  the  power  of  the  Lagidse.  The  con- 
quests of  Alexander  had  contributed  to  the  production 
of  a  more  permanent  monument  of  his  progress  than 
the  dynasty  of  the  Ptolemies.  On  the  specimens  sent 
home  to  his  great  teacher  had  been  founded  and  pub- 
lished the  greatest  scientific  work  of  ancient  times, 
Aristotle's  "  History  of  Animals."  In  it  the  modern 
word  dasypus  had  almost  entirely  superseded  the  older, 
and  it  might,  therefore,  well  be  expected  that  the 
translators  at  Alexandria  should  catch  the  new  fashion. 

1  Lev.  xi.  1—16 :  Deut.  xiv.  7.     See  Kuenen,  iii.  212. 


Lect.  XL VII.  THE   APOCRYPHA.  291 

But  there  was  an  even  yet  more  striking  example  of 
Aristotle's  influence  on  this  passage.  In  that  same 
context  the  hare  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  is  classed 
among  the  unclean  animals  as  being  a  ruminating  ani- 
mal. In  the  old  world,  before  the  birth  of  accurate 
observation,  that  which  had  the  appearance  of  rumi- 
nation had  been  taken  for  the  reality,  and  was  so  de- 
scribed. But  by  the  time  the  Greek  translators  ap- 
proached this  text,  the  secret  of  the  habits  of  the 
hare  had  been  disclosed  by  the  natural  history  of  Aris- 
totle, and,  accordingly,  on  this  minute  point  arose  the 
first  direct  conflict,  often  since  repeated,  between 
Theology  and  Science.  The  venerable  translators 
who  were  at  work,  if  so  be,  on  the  Pharos  island,  were 
too  conscientious  to  reject  so  clear  an  evidence  of  the 
fact ;  but  they  were  too  timid  to  allow  the  contradic- 
tion to  appear,  and  they  therefore,  with  the  usual 
rashness  of  fear,  boldly  interpolated  the  word  not  into 
the  sacred  text,  and  thus,  as  they  thought,  reconciled 
it  to  science  by  reversing  the  meaning  of  the  whole 
passage.  There  have  since  been  many  falsifications 
of  Science  to  meet  the  demands  of  theology.  This  is 
the  first  instance  of  many  like  falsifications  of  Scrip- 
ture to  meet  the  demands  of  Science. 

The  appearance  of  the  Septuagint  translation  was 
important  not  only  in  itself,  but  as  affording  The  Apoc_ 
a  new  opening  for  constant  additions  to  the  rypha" 
sacred  volume.  The  Hebrew  Literature  had  come 
nearly  to  an  end.  If  here  and  there  a  fresh  Hebrew 
book  or  a  fresh  Hebrew  Psalm  might  be  added,  their 
entrance  was  more  or  less  covert,  ambiguous,  and  ques- 
tionable. But  the  Greek  literature  was  still  abound- 
ing, and  into  that  vast  world  the  Jewish  race  was  now 
mtering.     From  this  time  forward,  with  very  few  ex- 


292  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII 

ceptions,  any  new  sacred  book  which  should  win  its 
way  must  be  part  not  of  the  Hebrew,  but  of  the  Greek 
Bible.  The  tents  of  Shem  were  closed,  but  the  doors 
of  Japheth  were  expanded  with  a  never-ending  en- 
largement. The  first  pages  of  this  Greek  volume 
began  with  the  Grecian  translation  of  the  Pentateuch  ; 
but  its  last  pages  were  not  closed  till  they  had  included 
the  last  of  the  writings  which  bore  the  name  of  St. 
John.  This  was  the  chief  outward  bond  between  the 
Jewish  and  the  Christian  Scriptures.  By  this  unity  of 
the  sacred  language  the  beginning  and  end  of  the 
sacred  literature  were  indissolubly  united,  and  not  only 
so,  but  by  its  intervention  was  filled  the  gap  between 
the  Old  and  the  New  Testament,  thus  veiling  their 
differences  under  the  common  garb  of  Greek.  Into 
that  vacant  space,  clothed  in  the  same  language,  stole 
in  those  Greek  books,  which  in  the  Latin  Church  have 
been  called  Deuterocanonical,  and  in  the  Protestant 
Churches  Apocryphal,  but  which  in  the  early  ages  of 
Christianity  were  blended,  under  the  common  sanction 
of  the  Septuagint,  with  the  earlier  books  which  closed 
with  Malachi,  the  Chronicles,  or  Daniel,  according  to 
the  varying  order  in  which  the  Hebrew  books  were 
arranged.3 

The  introduction  of  these2  writings  into  the   very 

1  See  Lecture  XLVIII.  "  canonical,"  a  title    of    inferiority 

2  It  may  be  necessary  to  give  which  well  expresses  their  relation 
briefly  the  history  of  the  generic  in  regard  to  the  Hebrew  books,  but, 
title  of  these  books.  is  hardly  consistent  with  the  entire 

1.  By  the  early  church  they  were  equality  with  the  canonical  books  to 
<when  not  reckoned  as  canonical)  which  they  have  been  raised  by  the 
tailed  ll  Ecclesiastical,"  i.e.,  hooks  Council  of  Trent  and  more  recently 
read  in  public  services,, I'  the  church,  by  the  Council  of  the  Vatican. 

2.  Bythe  1! :m  Catholic  church,        3.  By  the  Protestant  churches  they 

at  least  since  the  Council  of  Trent,  have  been  called   "Apocryphal,"   a 

hey   have    been    called    "  Deutero-  name  which  has  passed  through  three 


Lect.  XLVH. 


THE  APOCRYPHA.  293 


heart  of  the  ancient  Scriptures  has  had  wider  conse- 
quences than  is  often  recognized. 

In  some  respects,  no  doubt,  it  has  had  a  debasing 
effect  on  -the  religious  systems  which  have  been 
founded  on  the  mixed  volume  resulting  from  such  addi- 
tions. The  books  of  this  second  Canon  partook  largely 
of  the  enfeebled  style,  the  exaggerated  rhetoric,  the 
legendary  extravagance,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
rigid  exclusiveness,  which  characterized  the  history  and 
literature  of  the  nation  after  the  return  from  the  Cap- 
tivity. It  was,  thus  far,  a  true  instinct  which  has 
caused  the  Rabbinical  schools  to  denounce  the  perusal 
of  these  writings  with  a  severity  like  that  of  the  Roman 
Index.  "He  who  studies  the  uncanonical  books  will 
"  have  no  portion  in  the  world  to  come."  "  He  who 
"  introduces  into  his  house  more  than  the  twenty-four 
"  introduces  confusion." 1  And  the  like  condemnation 
has  been  felt,  if  not  expressed,  .by  those  Protestant 
Churches  or  teachers  who  have  most  eagerly  excluded 
from  use  any  Bible  or  Calendar  that  contains  them. 
But  there  is  another  side  to  the  question.  These  writ- 
ings, if  not  deserving  to  be  called  "  Canonical,"  as  by 
the  Church  of  Rome,  or  "  inspired,"  though  not  "  ca- 
"  nonical," 2  Scriptures,  as  by  the  Church  of  England,3 
are  invaluable  as  keeping  alive,  not  only  the  continuity 

phases  :  1.  A  title  of  praise  bestowed  Protestant  churches  at  the  Reforma- 

by  the  Gnostics  on  their  own  books  of  tion   (see  Professor  Westcott's   The 

' '  hidden  wisdom.' '     2.  A  title  of  re-  Bible  in  the  Church  ;  Professor  Plump- 

proacb  bestowed  by  the  early  church  tre  in  the  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Art. 

on  the  spurious  Gospels  and  the  like  "  Apocrypha"). 

literature,  with  the  view  of  stigma-  x  Kuenen,  iii. 

tizing  them  with  the  same  name  as  2  Canons  of  Trent;  Canons  of  the 

that  applied  to  the  Gnostic  books.  Vatican. 

3.  The  title  of  the  Deuterocanonical  8  Homilies    (Oxford    Ed.    1855), 

books  of  the  O.  T.,  first  given  by  100,   107,  242,  248,  389. 

Wycliffe,  and  finally  adopted  by  the 


294  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII. 

of  the  sacred  literature,  but  the  sense  of  the  gradations 
of  excellence  even  in  sacred  books ;  and  thus  serving; 
as  a  perpetual  protest  against  the  uniform,  rigorous, 
rigid,  levelling  theory  of  religious  excellence,  which  has 
been  the  bane  of  all  theology,  and  which  has  tended  so 
greatly  to  obscure  the  true  meaning  and  purpose  even 
of  the  earlier  Hebrew  Scriptures.  It  is  humorously 
told  in  a  famous  romance 1  of  our  day  how  the  pious 
peasant,  who  read  through  the  whole  Bible  regularly, 
though  he  felt  a  certain  disappointment  on  reading  the 
Apocrypha,  yet  rejoiced  in  the  freedom  which  it 
afforded  of  innocent  criticism  from  which  he  had  been 
hitherto  withheld.  That  sentiment  and  that  advantage 
are  not  confined  to  the  English  peasant.  The  free 
thought  which  thus  played  around  the  Apocryphal 
books  nurtured  a  spirit  of  inquiry  from  which  the 
whole  Bible  has  gained.  When  Jerome  attacked  the 
improbabilities  in  the  Song  of  the  Three  Children  in 
the  Greek  part  of  Daniel,  he  was  using  exactly  the 
same  weapons  which  Porphyry  used  against  the  early 
date  of  the  Hebrew  parts  of  the  same  book.  The  more 
enlightened  members  of  the  Roman  Church,  who  have 
been  familiarized  with  the  admixture  of  legendary 
matter  in  the  Books  of  Tobit  and  Judith,  have  been 
more  ready,  though  in  defiance  of  the  decrees  and 
usages  of  their  communion,  to  recognize  the  like  ele- 
ments in  the  Books  of  the  Pentateuch  or  of  the  Judges. 
And  even  to  those  who  (as  in  many  Protestant 
Churches)  refuse  to  concede  any  rank  to  the  Books  of 
the  Apocrypha,  a  solid  advantage  has  accrued  from  in- 
voluntary familiarity  with  writings  so  nearly  Biblical  in 
tone  and  spirit,  and  yet  by  the  traditions  of  their  sect 
Dr  family  excluded  from  the  Bible.    In  an  affecting  pas- 

1  Adam  Bcde,  c.  51. 


Lect.  XL VII.  THE   APOCRYPHA.  295 

sage  in  his  autobiography  John  Bunyan  relates  how  he 
was  for  a  long  period  at  once  comforted  and  perplexed 
by  finding  deep  inward  relief  from  words  for  which  he 
vainly  sought  within  the  four  corners  of  his  Bible : x 
"  Look  at  the  generations  of  old  and  see  ;  did  ever  any 
"  trust  in  the  Lord  and  was  confounded  f  "  "  Then  I 
"  continued/'  he  says,  "  above  a  year  and  could  not 
"  find  the  place ;  but  at  last,  casting  my  eyes  upon  the 
''Apocrypha  books,  I  found  it  in  the  tenth  verse  of  the 
"  second  chapter  of  Ecclesiasticus.  This  at  the  first 
"  did  somewhat  daunt  me  ;  because  it  was  not  in  those 
"  texts  that  we  call  holy  or  canonical.  Yet,  as  this  sen- 
"  tence  was  the  sum  and  substance  of  many  of  the 
"  promises,  it  was  my  duty  to  take  the  comfort  of  it,  and 
"  I  bless  God  for  that  word,  for  it  was  of  good  to  me. 
"  That  word  doth  still  ofttimes  shine  before  my  face." 

The  discovery  which  Bunyan  thus  made  of  a  source 
of  consolation  outside  the  "  canonical  texts"  has  a  far 
wider  application  than  the  particular  instance  which  so 
moved  him.  It  opens  as  it  were  a  postern-door  into 
the  charmed  circle  of  the  sacred  books.  It  calls  our 
attention  to  the  fact  that  there  were  writings  which, 
though  denied  a  place  in  the  Canonical  Scriptures,  yet 
shade  away  from  the  outskirts  of  those  Scriptures  into 
the  Grecian  philosophy  and  poetry,  and  have  been 
acknowledged  by  grave  theologians,  and  even  by  Prot- 
estant Churches,  to  be  inspired  by  the  same  Divine 
Spirit  that  breathed,  though  in  fuller  tones,  through 
Isaiah  or  through  David. 

The  same  instructive  process  is  enhanced  by  the  fact 
that  these  Books  are  themselves  of  such  varying  char- 
acter and  value.  Some  of  them,  like  the  Book  of  Ju- 
lith,  are  apparently  mere  fables ;  some,  like  the  addi- 

1  Grace  Abounding,  §§  62,  63,  64,  65. 


296  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII. 

tions  to  the  Books  of  Ezra,  Esther,  and  Daniel,  are 
examples  of  the  free  and  facile  mode  in  which,  at  that 
time,  the  earlier  sacred  books  were  "  improved,"  modi- 
fied, enlarged,  and  corrected,  by  the  Alexandrian  crit- 
ics. Some,  like  the  Books  of  the  Maccabees,  are 
attempts,  more  or  less  exact,  at  contemporary  or  nearly 
contemporary  history ;  some,  like  the  Psalter  of  Solo- 
mon, have  never  gained  an  entrance  even  into  this 
outer  court  of  the  sacred  writings ;  some,  like  the  Sec- 
ond  Book  of  Esdras  and  the  Book  of  Enoch,  have 
attained  a  Biblical  authority,  but  only  within  a  very 
limited  range.  But  there  are  two  which  tower  above 
the  rest,  and  which,  even  by  those  who  most  disparage 
the  others,  are  held  in  reverential  esteem.  The  one  is 
the  recommendation  of  the  theology  of  Palestine  to 
Alexandria  —  "  the  Wisdom  of  the  Son  of  Sirach  "  ;  the 
other  is  the  recommendation  of  the  theology  of  Alex- 
andria to  Palestine  —  "the  Wisdom  of  Solomon." 

They  are  both  in  the  same  class  of  literature.  They 
both  attach  themselves  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  not 
to  the  Prophetical  or  Historical  or  Poetical  portions, 
but  to  those  writings  on  which  the  influence  of  the  ex- 
ternal world  had  already  made  itself  felt — the  books 
which  bear  the  name  of  Solomon.1  They  both  furnish 
the  links  which  connect  the  earlier  Hebrew  literature 
with  that  final  outburst  of  religious  teaching  which  is 
recorded  in  the  Gospels  and  Epistles.  The  Parables 
and  Discourses  beside  the  Galilean  Lake,  the  Epistles 
of  James,  of  John,  and  of  the  unknown  author  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  have  hardly  any  affinity  with 
the  style  of  Daniel  or  Malachi,  of  Tobit  or  of  the  Rab- 
binical schools,  but  they  are  the  direct  continuation, 
ilthough  in  a  more  exalted  form,  of  those  two  Apoc- 
ryphal Books  of  Wisdom. 

1  See  Lecture  XXVII. 


Lkct.  xlvii.  ecclesiasticus.  297 

The  Wisdom1  of  Joshua  (or,  as   the  Greeks  called 
him,  Jesus),  the  Son  of  Sirach,  was  the  first  of 

J  The 

those  writings  which,  from  the  sanction  given  wisdom  of 

&  '  °  the  Son  of 

to  them  by  the  Church,  were  called  "  Eccle-  sirach. 

.  .  B.C.  180. 

"siastical"  as  distinct  from  "Canonical,"  and 
thus  took  to  itself  the  name  "Ecclesiasticus,"  which 
properly  belonged  to  them  all.  It  was  for  the  Jews  of 
Alexandria  first,  and  then  for  the  Christians,  "  The 
"  Church  Book ;"  "the  favorite  book  of  ecclesiastical 
"  edification ; "  2  "  the  Whole  Duty  of  Man,"  "  the  Imi- 
"  tation  " — the  "summary  of  all  virtues,"  as  it  was 
called  in  its  original  title. 

It  must  have  early  acquired  this  reputation.     The 
grandson  of  its  author  arrived  in  Alexandria 

b.  c.  132. 

in  the  close  of  the  troubled  reign  of  Ptolemy 
Physcon  —  the  second  of  those  kings  who  were  re- 
nowned amongst  the  Gentiles  for  bearing,  seriously 
or  ironically,  the  name  of  "  benefactor  "  (Euergetes). 
When,  amongst  his  countrymen  in  the  foreign  land,  he 
discovered  "  no  slight  difference  of  education,"  and  at 
the  same  time  a  keen  desire  to  become  instructed  in 
the  customs  of  their  fathers,  he  found  no  task  more 
worthy  of   his  labor,  knowledge,  and  sleepless  study 

1  It    is    strange    that    any    doubt  dication  from  the  mention  of  Simon 
should  have  ever  arisen  on  the  date  in  chap.  1.  1,  is  less  certain.    But  the 
of  Ecclesiasticus.    The  comparison  of  great  probability  in  favor  of  identi- 
Haggai  i.   1;  ii.  1;  Zech.  i.  7,  vii.  1,  fying  him  with  Simon  II.  agrees  with 
1  Mace.  xiii.  42,  xiv.   27,  makes  it  the  conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  the 
certain  that  eV  t$  6y5o$  ko.1  TpianoffTip  interval  between  the  grandfather  who 
erei  «r!  rov  Euepyerov  BaaiAeas  in  the  wrote  and  the  grandson  who  trans- 
Prologue   can  only   mean    "in    the  lated,  and  this  would  place  the  origi- 
thirty-eighth    year   of    King    Euer-  nal  work  about  b.  c.  180. 
getes;"  and  as  the  first  Euergetes         2  A  fierce  attack  upon  it,  as  fa- 
only  rei»ned  twenty-five  years,  the  voring    Arianism,   necromancy,   and 
date  of  the  translation  is  thus  fixed  Judaic  error,  was  published  by  Rey- 
V)  the  thirty-eighth  year  of  the  sec-  nolds  in  1666. 
>nd  Euergetes,  b.  c.  132.     The  in- 
38 


298  ALEXANDRIA  Lect.  XLVI1 

than  to  translate  into  Greek  this  collection  of  all  that 
was  most  practical  in  the  precepts  and  most  inspiring 
in  the  history  of  his  people. 

It  is,  perhaps,  the  only  one  of  the  Deuterocanonical 1 
books  composed  originally,  not  in  Greek,  but  in  He- 
brew ;  and  the  translator  well  knew  the  difficulty  of 
rendering  the  peculiarities  of  his  native  tongue  into 
the  fluent  language  of  Alexandria.  It  is  the  first  re- 
flection which  we  possess  on  the  Old  Testament  Scrip- 
tures after  the  commencement  of  the  formation  of  the 
Canon.  "  The  Law  and  the  Prophets  "  were  already 
closed.  "  The  other  books  "  were,  as  the  phrase  im- 
plies, still  regarded  as  an  appendix,  capable  of  addi- 
tions, yet  already  beginning  to  be  parted  by  an  intel- 
ligible though  invisible  line,  from  those  of  later  date.2 
The  Son  of  Sirach  had  given  himself  much  to  their 
perusal;  he  wras,  as  wre  may  say,  the  first  Biblical 
student ;  but  he  felt  that  he  had  still  something  new 
to  add,  something  old  to  collect.  He  was,  like  a  great 
teacher  of  later  times,  as  one  born  out  of  due  time.3 
He  had  awakened  up  "  last  of  all,  as  one  that  gather- 
"  eth  after  the  grape-gatherers 4 ;  by  the  blessing  of  the 
"  Lord  he  profited,"  and  "  filled  his  winepress  like  a 
"  gleaner  of  grapes."  It  was  a  noble  ambition,  alike 
of  the  grandfather  and  the  grandson,  to  carry  into  the 
most  minute  duties  of  daily  life  the  principles  of  their 
ancient  law  —  "  laboring  not  for  himself  only,  but  for 
"  all  wTho  seek  learning." 

It  is,  if  not  the  largest  book  in  the  whole  Bible  (for 
the  Psalms,  and,  possibly,  the  Book  of  Isaiah's  Prophe- 

1  The    first    book    of    Maccabees         2  Ecclus.,  Prologue.     See  Lecture 
aiay  be  anothei   exception,  and  per-     XL VIII. 
laps  Judith.  8  1  Cor.  xv.  8. 

*  Ecclus.,  xxxiii.  16. 


Lect.  xlvii.  ecclesiasticus.  299 

cies,  exceed  it),  yet  certainly  the  largest  of  one  single 
author.  It  contains  the  first  allusions  to  the  earlier 
records  of  the  Jewish  race.  The  Psalms,  and  occasion- 
ally the  Prophets,  had  touched  on  the  history  of  Abra- 
ham, Jacob,  Moses,  Samuel.  But  neither  in  Psalms  or 
Prophets,  neither  in  Proverbs  or  history,  is  there  the 
slightest  reference  to  the  mystic  opening  of  the  Book 
of  Genesis,  which  in  Christian  times  has  been  the 
battlefield  of  so  many  a  strife,  theological,  scientific, 
and  critical.  It  is  the  Son1  of  Sirach,  in  his  passing  al- 
lusions to  the  creation  of  Adam,  and  to  the  old  giants, 
who  is  the  first  precursor  of  the  Pelagian  controversy, 
of  the  "Paradise  Lost,"  of  the  Elohistic  and  Jehovistic 
theories. 

Jerusalem2  is  still  the  centre,  and  Palestine  the  hori- 
zon, of  his  thoughts.  The  Priesthood,3  with  their 
offerings,  their  dues,  and  their  stately  appearance,  are 
to  him  the  most  prominent  figures  of  the  Jewish  com- 
munity. Nor  is  the  modern  institution  of  the  Scribes 
forgotten.4  He  draws  his  images  of  grandeur  from  the 
cedars  of  Lebanon  and  the  fir  trees  that  clothe  the  sides 
of  Hermon,  from  the  terebinth 5  with  its  spreading 
branches  —  his  images  of  beauty  from  the  palmtrees 
in  the  tropical  heat  of  Engedi,  or  from  the  roses  and 
lilies  and  fragrant  shade  by  the  well-watered  gardens 
of  Jericho.  The  drops  of  bitterness  which  well  up 
amidst  his  exuberant  flow  of  patriotic  thanksgiving  are 
all  discharged  within  that  narrow  range  of  vision  which 
fixed  his  whole  theological  and  national  animosity  on 
the  three  hostile  tribes  that  penned  in  the  little  Jewish 

1  Ecclus.,  xiv.  17;  xvi.  7;  xvii.  1;  8  Ecclus.,  vii.  28,  30;  xiv.  11;  xxi. 
sxxiii.  10;  xliv.  16,  17.  1,18;  xxviii.  11;  xxxii.  1 ;  xiv.  7-20. 

2  Ecclus.,    xxiv     ii.  ;   xxxvi.    13  ;         4  Ecclus.,  x.  6. 

..  2<>.  6  Ecclus.,  xxiv.  13-19;  1.  8-12 


300  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XL VII 

colony  —  the  Edomites  on  the  south,  the  Philistines  on 
the  west,  and  Samaritans  on  the  north.1  And  in  ac- 
cordance with  this  local  and  almost  provincial  limita- 
tion is  the  absence  of  those  wider  Oriental  or  Western 
aspects  which  abound  in  other  Canonical  or  Deutero- 
canonical  books  of  this  period.  It  is,  after  Malachi,  the 
one  specimen  of  a  purely  Palestinian  treatise  during 
this  period. 

But  the  grandson,  through  whose  careful  translation 
alone  it  has  been  preserved,  was  not  wrong  in  thinking 
that  it  had  a  sufficiently  universal  character  to  make  it 
suitable  for  the  vast  complex  world  in  which  he  found 
himself  in  the  capital  of  Alexander's  dominions.  Even 
although  hardly  any  direct  Alexandrian  influence  can 
be  detected  in  its  style,  yet  it  is  evident  that  the  breath 
of  the  Grecian  spirit  has  touched  it  at  the  core,  and 
raised  it  out  of  its  Semitic  atmosphere.  The  closed 
hand  of  the  Hebrew  proverb  has  opened  (thus  to  apply 
a  well-known  metaphor)  into  the  open2  palm  of  Gre- 
cian rhetoric.  The  author,  although  his  birthplace  and 
his  home  were  Jerusalem,  was  yet  a  traveller  in  foreign 
lands  —  he  knew  the  value,  even  if  he  had  not  had  the 
actual  experience,  of  "  serving  among  great  men  and 
"  before  princes ;  "  he  had  "  tried  the  good  and  the 
"  evil  among  men."  3 

In  some  respects  the  Book  of  the  Son  of  Sirach  is 
but  a  repetition  of  the  ancient  writings  of  Solomon, 
In  some  of  its  maxims  it  sinks  below  the  dignity  of 
those  writings  by  the  homeliness  of  its  details 4  for  guid- 
ance  of  behavior   at   meals,5    of  commercial    specula- 

i   Ecclus.,1.  26.    For  Samaria  read  8  Ecclus.,  xxxix.  4 ;  li.  13. 

Seir,  and  possibly  for  "  the  foolish  4  Ecclus,  viii.  11-19;  xi.  10;  xiii. 

"people"  (ixupSs)  read  "the  Amo-  2;  xix.  1;  xxix.;  xxxvii.  11. 

"  rites  "  (Grimm,  ad  loc).  6  Ecclus,  xxxi.  16. 

8  See  especially  Ecclus.,  xxxviii. 
•4-  xxxix.  11. 


Lect.  xlvii.  ecclesiasticus.  301 

tions,  of  social  advancement.  But  its  general  tone  is 
worthy  of  that  first  contact  between  the  two  great 
civilizations  of  the  ancient  world,  and  breathes  a  spirit 
which  an  Isaiah  would  not  have  condemned,  nor  a 
Sophocles  or  a  Theophrastus  have  despised.  There  is 
not  a  word  in  it  to  countenance  the  minute  casuistries 
of  the  later  Rabbis,  or  the  metaphysical  subtleties  of 
the  later  Alexandrians.  It  pours  out  its  whole  strength 
in  discussing  the  conduct  of  human  life,  or  the  direc- 
tion of  the  soul  to  noble  aims.  Here  first  in  the  sacred 
books  we  find  the  full  delineation  of  the  idea  of  educa- 
tion —  the  slow,  gradual  process,  "  at  first  by  crooked 
"  ways,  then  will  she  return  the 1  straight  way,  and 
"  comfort  him,  and  show  him  her  secrets."  "  At  the 
"  last  thou  shalt  find  her  rest,  and  that  shall  be  turned 
"  to  thy  joy.  Then  shall  her  fetters  be  a  strong  de- 
"  fence  for  thee,  and  her  chains  a  robe  of  glory."2 
"  Here  is  a  pointed  warning  against  spoiled  children : 
"  Cocker  thy  child,  and  he  shall  make  thee  afraid,  play 
"  with  him  and  he  will  bring  thee  to  heaviness." 3 
Here  is  the  measure  of  true  nobleness :  "  It  is  not 
"  meet  to  despise  a  poor  man  that  hath  understanding, 
"  neither  is  it  convenient  to  magnify  a  sinful  man. 
"  Great  men  and  judges  and  potentates  shall  be  hon- 
"  ored,  yet  is  there  none  of  them  greater  than  he  that 
"  feareth  the  Lord.  To  the  slave  that  is  wise  shall 
"  they  that  are  free  do  service,  and  he  that  hath  knowl- 
"  edge  will  not  grudge  when  he  is  reformed."4  Here 
is  the  backbone  of  the  honest  love  of  truth:  "In 
"  nowise  speak  against  the  truth,  but  be  abashed  of  the 
"  error  of  thy  ignorance."  Be  not  ashamed  to  confess 
thy  faults,  nor  "  swim    against  the  stream  of  convic- 

1  Ecclus.,  iv.  17.  8  Ecclus.,  xxx.  9. 

3  Ecclus.,  vi.  28.  4  Ecclus.,  x.  23,  24. 


302  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLV1I. 

"  tion."  "  Strive  for  the  truth  unto  death  and  the 
"  Lord  shall  fight  for  thee."  1  There  is  a  tender  com- 
passion which  reaches  far  into  the  future  religion  of 
mankind  :  "  Let  it  not  grieve  thee  to  bow  down  thine 
"  ear  to  the  poor  and  give  him  a  friendly  answer  with 
"  gentleness.  Be  as  a  father  to  the  fatherless,  and  in- 
"  stead  of  a  husband  to  the  widow ;  so  shalt  thou  be  as 
"  the  son  of  the  Most  High  and  He  shall  love  thee 
"  more  than  thy  mother  doth." 2  If  there  is  at  times 
the  mournful  and  hopeless  view  of  life  and  of  death3 
which  pervades  the  earlier  "  Preacher,"  yet  on  the 
whole  the  tone  is  one  of  vigorous,  magnanimous  ac- 
tion. 

He  must  have  been  a  delightful  teacher  who  could 
so  write  of  filial  affection 4  and  of  friendship  5  in  all  its 
forms,  and  so  rise  above  the  harshness  of  his  relations 
with  his  slaves.6  He  must  have  seen  deep  into  the 
problems  of  social  life  who  contrasts  as  keenly  as 
Bacon  or  Goethe  the  judgments  of  the  uneducated 
many  and  the  highly-educated  few.7  Yet  in  the  midst 
of  these  homely  and  varied  experiences,  which  belong 
only  to  the  imitator  of  the  wise  King,  a  voice  as  of  the 
Prophet  and  the  Psalmist  is  still  heard.  Again  and 
again  the  strain  is  raised,  such  as  Amos  and  Isaiah  had 
lifted  up,  not  the  less  impressive  for  the  quiet  soberness 
with  which  it  is  urged.  It  is  the  same  doctrine  of  the 
substitution  of  the  moral  duties  for  the  ceremonial. 
The  true  "  atonement "  for  sins  is  declared  to  be,  not 
the  dumb  sacrifices  in  the  Temple  courts,  but  "  the 
"  honor  to  parents,"  the  giving  of  "  alms."     The  trust 

1  Ecclus.,  iv.  25.  6  Ecclus.,  vi.  14,  15;  ix.  10;  xii.  8; 

2  Ecclus.,  xli.  1.  xix.  13;  xxxvii.  2. 

8  Ecclus.,  iv.  8,  10.  6  Ecclus.,  iv.  30;   vii.  21;    x    25; 

*  Ecclus.,  iii.  12-15;  vii.  28.  xxxiii.   24. 

7  Ecclus.,  xxxviii.   24;  xxxix.  11 


Lect.  XL VII.  ECCLESIASTICUS  303 

in  "  oblations,"  the  recklessness  of  reliance  on  the  mere 
mercy  of  God,  are  solemnly  discountenanced.  "  He 
"  that  requiteth  a  good  turn  offereth  fine  flour ;  and 
"  he  that  giveth  alms  sacrificeth  praise.  To  depart 
"  from  unrighteousness  is  propitiation."  x  And  under- 
neath all  this  there  still  burns  the  quiet  flame  of  hope 
and  resignation.  "  Look  at  the  generations  of  the  old 
"  and  see  "  (it  is  the  passage  which  "shone  before  the 
"  face  "  of  Bunyan)  "  did  ever  any  trust  in  the  Lord 
"  and  were  confounded  ?  As  His  majesty  is  so  is  His 
"  mercy." 2  Both  by  example  and  by  definition  there 
is  no  more  exalted  description  of  the  true  greatness 
of  prayer.3 

But  there  is  yet  another  characteristic  of  the  Son 
of  Sirach,  more  peculiarly  his  own.  As  the  philosophy 
of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  is  contained  in  the  larger 
part  of  the  book  —  possibly  from  older  documents  — 
so  their  poetry  finds  a  voice  in  the  conclusion,  which 
is  beyond  question  original.  It  is  the  song  of  praise  4 
which,  beginning  with  the  glories  of  the  Creation, 
breaks  forth  into  that  "  Hymn  of  the  Forefathers,"  as 
it  is  called  in  its  ancient  title,  to  which  there  is  no 
parallel  in  the  Old  Testament,  but  of  which  the  cata- 
logue of  the  worthies  of  faith  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  is  an  obvious  imitation.  Here  and  here 
only  is  a  full  expression  given  to  that  natural  instinct 
of  reverence  for  the  mighty  dead,  which  has  in  these 
striking  words  been  heard  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion in  the  festivals  of  the  great  benefactors  of  Chris- 
tendom, or  when  the  illustrious  of  the  earth  are  com- 
mitted to  the  grave. 

1  Ecclus.,   iii.   3,   4,   30;   v.  5,  6;         8  Ecclus.,  xxiii.  1-6;  xxxv.  17. 
rii.  9,  10 ;  xxxv.  1-7.  *  Ecclus.,  xlii.  15-1.  29. 

2  Ecclus.,  ii.  4-18. 


304  ALEXANDRIA  Lect.  XL VII 

"  Let  us  now  praise  famous  men  and  the  fathers 
"that  begat  us."1  "Their  bodies2  are  buried  in 
"  peace,  but  their  name  liveth  for  evermore."  It  be- 
gins with  the  unknown  sages  of  antiquity  ;  it  closes 
with  the  "  Ultimus  Judseorum  "  as  it  seemed,  of  his 
own  generation,  Simon  the  Just.  Well  might  the 
grandson  delight  to  render  into  Greek  for  the  country- 
men of  Pindar  and  Pericles  a  roll  of  heroes  as  noble 
as  were  ever  commemorated  at  the  Isthmian  games  or 
in  the  Athenian  Ceramicus. 

The  "  Wisdom  of  the  Son  of  Sirach  "  was  followed, 
The  Book  of  a*  now  l°n»  an  interval  we  know  not,  by  "  the 
wisdom,  u  w^do-m  °f  Solomon."  As  the  former  book 
was  the  expression  of  a  sage  at  Jerusalem  with  a 
tincture  of  Alexandrian  learning,  so  the  latter  book 
was  the  expression  of  an  Alexandrian  sage  presenting 
his  Grecian  ideas  under  the  forms  of  Jewish  history. 
We  feel  with  him  the  oppressive  atmosphere  of  the 
elaborate  Egyptian  idolatry.3  We  see  through  his 
eyes  the  ships  passing  along  the  Mediterranean  waters 
into  the  Alexandrian  harbor.4  We  trace  the  footprint 
of  Aristotle  in  the  enumeration,  word  by  word,  of  the 
four  great  ethical  virtues.6  We  recognize  the  rhetoric 
of  the  Grecian  sophists  in  the  Ptolemasan  Court ; 6  we 
are  present  at  the  luxurious  banquets  and  lax  discus- 
sions of  the  neighboring  philosophers  of  Cyrene.7 
But  in  the  midst  of  this  Gentile  scenery  there  is  a 
voice  which  speaks  with  the  authority  of  the  ancient 
prophets  to  this  new  world.  The  book  is  a  signal  in- 
stance   of  the  custom   prevalent  in  the  two  centuries 

1  Ecclus.,    xliv.    1.     Read   on    all  4  Ibid.,  xiv.  1-6. 
Founders'  days.  6  Ibid.,  viii.  7. 

2  Ecclus.,  xliv.  14.     Sung  in  Han-  8  Ibid.,  v.  9-12;  xi.  17-18. 
i^l's  Funeral  Anthem.  7  Ibid.,  ii.  1-7. 

8  Wisdom,  xiii.  2-19;  xv.  17-19. 


Lect.  XL VII.  THE   WISDOM  OF   SOLOMON.  305 

before  the  Christian  era,  both  in  the  Jewish  and  the 
Gentile  world,  of  placing  modern  untried  writings  un- 
der the  shelter  of  some  venerable  authority.  No  name 
appeared  for  this  purpose  so  weighty  as  that  of  the 
great  master  of  the  wisdom  of  Israel.  Solomon  is 
evoked  from  the  dead  past  to  address  the  rulers  of 
mankind.  "  Love  righteousness  ye  that  are  judges  of 
"  the  earth.  Hear,  therefore,  0  ye  kings,  and  under- 
"  stand  ;  for  your  power  is  given  unto  you  of  the 
"  Lord,  and  your  dominion  from  the  Most  High,  who 
"  shall  try  your  works  and  search  you  out  your  coun- 
"  sels.  Being  ministers  of  His  kingdom,  ye  have  not 
"judged  aright,  nor  kept  the  law,  nor  walked  after 
"  the  counsel  of  God."  *  It  is  the  first  strong  expres- 
sion, uttered  with  the  combined  force  of  Greek  free- 
dom and  Hebrew  solemnity,  not  of  the  Divine  right, 
but  of  the  Divine  duty,  of  kings ;  and  it  might  well 
be  provoked  by  the  spectacle  of  the  corrupt  rulers 
whether  of  the  Egyptian  or  Syrian  dynasties.  The 
importance  of  wisdom  and  the  value  of  justice  had 
been  often  set  forth  before,  both  by  Jew  and  Greek. 
But  there  is  a  wider  and  more  tender  grasp  of  the 
whole  complex  relation  of  intellectual  and  moral  excel- 
lence, and  therefore  of  the  whole  ideal  of  true  religion, 
in  the  indications  which  this  Book  contains  of  the  uni- 
versal workings  of  the  Divine  Mind  in  the  heart  of 
man.  "  Love 2  is  the  care  of  education ;  love  is  the 
'*  keeping  of  wisdom.  The  just  man  maketh  his  boast 
'that  God  is  his  father,  and  that  he  is  the  son  of 
'<God.3  The  spirit  of  the  Lord  filleth  the  world.4 
■  Thou  sparest  all,  for  they  are  thine,  0   Lord,  thou 

i  Wisdom,  i.  1;  vi.  1,  3,  4.  8  Ibid.,  ii.  16-18. 

8  Ibid.,  vi.  17,  18  ;  wy&irr).  4  Ibid.,  i.  7. 

39 


306  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect    XLV11 

u  lover  of  souls.1  Thine  incorruptible  Spirit  filleth 
"  all  things.  Thy  providence,  0  Father,  governeth 
"  the  world.2  Yet  they  were  unto  themselves  more 
"  grievous  than  the  darkness." 3  "  The  Holy  Spirit 
"  of  education."  "  An  understanding  spirit,  holy,  one 
"  only,  manifold,  subtile,  flexible,  transparent,4  unde- 
"  filed,  plain,  not  subject  to  hurt,  loving  the  thing 
"  that  is  good,  quick,  which  cannot  be  hindered,  ready 
"  to  do  good,  kind  to  man,  steadfast,  sure,  free  from 
"  care,  having  all  power,  overseeing  all  things  and 
"  going  through  all  spirits  however  pure,  intelligent 
"  and  subtile,  more  moving  than  any  motion,  passing 
"  through  all  things  by  reason  of  her  pureness ;  for 
"  she  is  the  breath  of  the  power  of  God,  and  an  in- 
"  fluence  flowing  from  the  genuine  glory  of  the  Al- 
"  mighty ;  therefore  no  defiled  thing  can  fall  into  her  : 
"  the  lightness  of  the  everlasting  light,  the  unspotted 
"  mirror  of  the  energy  of  God,  and  the  image  of  His 
"  goodness  ;  being  but  one,  she  can  do  all  things ;  and, 
"  remaining  in  herself,  she  maketh  all  things  new,  and 
"  in  all  ages  entering  into  holy  souls,  she  maketh  them 
"  friends  of  God  and  prophets." 5 

The  conception  of  "  Wisdom "  as  "  the  personified 
"  idea  of  the  mind  in  God,  in  creation,  —  a  mirror  in 
"which  the  world  and  mankind  are  ever  present  to 
"him,"6  —  is  in  part  derived  from  the  ancient  Solomon- 
ian  theology ;  but  it  is  colored  by  the  Platonic  doctrine, 
and  lends  itself  to  the  wide  development  opened  by  the 
doctrine  of  "  the  Word  "  in  Christian  theology  and  by 
the  doctrine  of  "Law"   in  European  philosophy.     The 

1  Wisdom,  xi.  26.  6  Wisdom,  vii.  22-27. 

2  Ibid.,  xii.  1.  6  Dbllinger,    Gentile  and  Jew,  ii. 
8  Ibid.,  xvii.  21.                                      384* 

4  Ibid.,  i   5. 


Lect.  XL VII.  THE   WISDOM   OF   SOLOMON.  307 

very  phrases,  "  Love  or  Charity,"  "  Holy  Spirit,"  "  only 
"begotten,"  "manifold,"  "philanthropic,"  "  Provi- 
"  dence,  "  the  Fatherhood  of  God,"  occur  here  in  the 
Greek  Bible,  some  of  them  in  the  Greek  language,  for 
the  first  time  ;  and  appear  not  again  till  we  find  them 
in  the  New  Testament.  No  wonder  that  this  singular 
book  has  been  ascribed  to  Philo,  the  famous  contempor- 
ary of  the  Apostles,1  or  to  that  other  Jew  of  Alexan- 
dria,2 who  was  "  eloquent  and  mighty  in  the  Scriptures," 
and  in  whom  Luther  saw  the  author  of  the  mysterious 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  No  wonder  that  Ewald,  with 
his  usual  insight,  "  declares  that  in  the  deep  glow 
"  which,  with  all  its  apparent  tranquillity,  streams 
"  through  its  veins,  in  the  nervous  energy  of  its  pro- 
"  verbial  style,  in  the  depth  of  its  representations,  we 
"  have  a  premonition  of  John  ;  and  in  the  conception  of 
"  heathenism  a  preparation  for  Paul,  like  a  warm  rustle 
"of  spring,  ere  the  time  is.  fully  come."3  No  wonder, 
that  in  that  elaborate  description  of  Wisdom  an  emi- 
nent statesman  of  our  day,  in  one  of  his  most  generous 
moods,  should  have  seen  that  it  comprises  an  exact 
anticipation  of  the  liberal  aspect  of  true  Religion 
"  which  alone  can  flourish,  not  by  a  policy  of  isolation, 
"  but  by  filling  itself  with  a  humane  and  genial  warmth, 
"  in  close  sympathy  with  every  true  instinct  and  need 
"  of  men,  regardful  of  the  just  titles  of  every  faculty  of 
"  his  nature,  apt  to  associate  with  and  make  its  own 
w  all,  under  whatever  name,  which  goes  to  enrich  and 
"enlarge  the  patrimony  of  the  race."4 

These  preluclings   of  a  high  philosophy   and   faith, 
whether  two  centuries  before  or  close  upon  the  dawn 

1  Jerome,  Pref.  in  Lib.  Salom.  *  Mr.  Gladstone's  Address  to  the 

2  Acts  xviii.  24.  University  of  Edinburgh  on  the  In- 
8  Ewald,  v.  484.                                   fluence  of  Greece,  1865. 


308  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVli. 

of  the  new  era,  are,  in  any  case,  the  genuine  product 
of  Alexandrian  Judaism,  of  the  union  of  Greek  and 
Hebrew  thought.  And  in  one  special  quarter  of  the 
religious  horizon  there  is  a  revelation  which  this  un- 
known author  is  the  first  to  proclaim,  with  the  author- 
ity  of  firm  conviction  and  deep  insight,  whether  to  the 
Gentile  or  the  Jew  ;  namely,  the  revelation  of  "  the 
"  hope  full  of  immortality,"  "  the  immortality  of 
"righteousness."1  In  the  Psalmists  and  Prophets  there 
had  been  bright  anticipations  of  such  a  hope,  insepar- 
able from  their  unfailing  assurance  of  the  power  and 
goodness  of  the  Eternal.2  But  it  never  took  the  form 
of  a  positive,  distinct  assertion.  In  the  Grecian  world 3 
a  vast  step  forward  was  taken  in  the  Platonic  represen- 
tations of  the  last  teaching  of  Socrates.  At  last  the 
seed  thus  sown  by  the  doctrine  of  Athenian  philosophy 
fell  on  the  deep  soil  of  a  Hebrew  faith,  and  struck  root 
downward  to  a  depth  from  which  it  has  never  since 
been  eradicated,  and  bore  fruit  upward,  which  has  sus- 
tained the  moral  life  of  Christendom  to  this  hour.  Nor 
is  it  only  the  force  and  pathos  with  which  this  truth  of 
a  future  existence  is  urged,  but  the  grounds  on  which 
it  is  based,  that  fill  the  soul  and  intensify  the  teaching 
of  this  Jewish  Phccdo.  It  is  founded  on  those  two  con- 
victions, which,  alike  to  the  most  philosophic  and  the 
most  simple  minds,  still  seem  the  most  cogent  —  the 
imperfection  of  a  good  man's  existence  if  limited  to 
this  present  life,  and  the  firm  grasp  on  the  Divine  per- 
fections. "  The  souls  of  the  righteous  are  in  the  hand 
"of  God."  "In  the  sight  of  the  unwise  they  seemed 
''to  die;  but  they  are  in  peace."  "  He,  being  made 
'perfect  in  a  short  time,  fulfilled  a  long  time."     "  God 

1  Wisdom,  iii.  4;  i.  15.  8  Sec  Lecture  XL VI. 

2  See  Lectures  VII.  and  XXV. 


Lect.  xlvii.  aristobulus.  309 

"  created  man  to  be  immortal,  and  made  him  an  image 
"  of  His  own  eternity.  To  know  God  is  perfect  right- 
"  eousness.  To  know  His  power  is  the  root  of  immor- 
tality."1 

There  is  yet  one  more  expansion  of  the  limits  of  sa- 
cred literature  into  the  world  of  general  cul-  Aristobu. 
ture.  The  Hebrew,  antagonism  to  the  Gentile  lus< 
polytheism  is  still  brought  out  strongly  in  the  Greek 
Daniel  and  Baruch.  But  we  now  first  see 
clearly  not  only  the  imperceptible  influence  of 
one  upon  the  other,  but  the  avowed  recognition  of  the 
religious  excellence  of  each.  This  tendency  is  summed 
up  in  one  name,  now  almost  forgotten,  possibly  used  as 
a  mask  for  writings  of  a  somewhat  later 2  age,  but  of  the 
highest  eminence  at  the  time,  and  standing  at  the 
fountain-head  of  two  vast  streams  of  thought,  of  which 
the  effects  on  theology  have  never  ceased.  In  a  critical 
moment 3  in  the  fate  of  the  Jews  of  Palestine  they  are 
represented  as  addressing  a  letter  to  "  Aristobulus, 
"master  of  King  Ptolemy,  and  of  the  stock  of  the 
"  anointed  priests."  This  was  Aristobulus,4  first  of  that 
name  which  afterwards  became  so  common,  himself  the 
chief  of  the  Jewish  community  at  Alexandria,  in  the 
time  of  Ptolemy  VII.,  whose  instructor  he  had  become. 
He  is  one  of  those  mysterious  personages,  of  whom  his- 
tory speaks  but  little,  yet  whose  importance  is  beyond 
all  proportion  to  the  small  space  which  they  appear  to 
occupy.  Others,  no  doubt,  there  were,  who  endeav- 
ored to  blend  in  one  the  two  literatures  that  met 
under  the  shadow  of  the  Alexandrian  Museum.5     Some 

1  Wisdom,  iii.   2  ;   iv.  13;    v.  15  ;         s  2  Mace.  i.  9. 

iv.   3.  4  His  Hebrew  name  was  probably 

2  For  the   arguments  against  the  Judas.     See  Lecture  XLIX. 
genuineness     of     the     Aristobulian  5  The   Jewish   historians   of    this 
Tritings,  see  Kuenen,  iii.   207.  period   at  Alexandria  were:    1.  De- 


310  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLV1I. 

rewrote  the  story  of  Israel  in  the  verse  of  Grecian  epic 
or  tragedy.  Some  interwove  with  the  sacred  narrative 
the  traditions  of  Egypt  and  Chaldsea.  But  it  was  Aris- 
tobulus  who,  as  far  as  we  know,  first  made  this  recon- 
ciliation his  deliberate  and  avowed  object. 

Unlike  most  of  the  later  Alexandrian  scholars,  he 
Hisendeav-  was  a  disciple,  not  of  Plato,  but  of  Aris- 
Hebraise      totle.    The  master  of  Alexander  still  held  sway 

the  Grecian    . 

literature,  m  Alexander  s  city.  Under  this  potent  in- 
fluence Aristobulus  was  determined  to  find  the  Hebrew 
religion  in  the  Greek  philosophy.1  He  was  determined 
also  to  find  the  Greek  philosophy  in  the  Hebrew  Script- 
ures. In  each  of  these  enterprises  there  was  a  noble 
motive,  but  a  dangerous  method.  In  the  attempt  to 
find  the  Hebrew  truth  in  the  Greek  he  was  fired,  as 
many  a  devout  Jew  may  well  have  been  fired,  with  the 
desire  to  claim  in  that  glorious  literature,  now  for  the 
first  time  opening  on  the  Oriental  horizon,  an  affinity 
with  that  which  was  deemed  most  sacred  in  the  Jewish 
faith.  It  was  like  the  Renaissance  of  the  same  liter- 
ature after  the  night  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Jewish 
priest,  like  the  mediaeval  ecclesiastic,  was  ravished  with 
the  beauty  of  the  new  vision,  and  longed  to  make  it  his 
own.  But  the  means  by  which  he  endeavored  to  cross 
the  gulf  which  parted  them  was 

A  fatal  and  perfidious  bark, 
Built  in  tli'  eclipse,  and  rigged  with  curses  dark. 

metrius  (Clem.  Alex.  Strom.,  i.  21;  Exodus  (Eus.  Prcep.  Ev.,  ix.  28,  29). 

Jerome,  Cat.  III.  Script.,  38).    2.  Eu-  2.  Philo  the  Elder,  poem  on  Abra- 

polemus  (Clem  Alex.  Strom.,  i.  21).  ham  (Ibid.,  ix.  21-24).     3.  Theodo- 

\.  Artapanus  (Eus.  Prcep.  Ev.,  ix.  tus,  poem  on  the  story  of  Dinah  (ibid., 

\8,  23,  27).    4.  Cleodemus  (Malchus)  ix.   22).     (See  Griitz,  iii.  40,   438; 

(Josephus,  Ant.,  L  15).     5.  Jason  of  Herzfeld,  iii.  517.) 
C)-rene  (2  Mace,  ii.  23;  Josephus,         1  See     Nicolas,     Doctrines     lieli- 

c.  Ap.,   i.  23).     The   Jewish   poets  gieuses  cles  Juifs,  129-140. 
were:  1.  Ezekiel,  a  tragedy  on  the 


Lect.  XL VII.  ARISTOBULUS.  311 

« 

Under  a  delusion  probably  unconscious,  he,  like  hun- 
dreds of  Jewish  and  Christian  theologians  afterwards, 
persuaded  himself  that  the  evident  identity  between 
the  admirable  features  of  the  two  literatures  sprang, 
not  from  the  native  likeness  which  exists  between  all 
things  true  and  beautiful,  but  from  the  fact,  as  he  al- 
leged, that  the  one  was  borrowed  from  the  other ;  that 
the  sages  and  poets  of  Grecian  antiquity  had  but  pla- 
giarized their  best  parts  from  Moses  *  or  Solomon  or 
Jeremiah.  And  then,  with  the  facile  descent  of  error, 
he,  not  alone  of  his  age,  but  foremost  in  this  special  de- 
partment, labored  to  strengthen  his  cause  by  the  de- 
liberate falsification  ot  Greek  literature,  sometimes  by 
inventing  whole  passages,  sometimes  by  interpolating 
occasional  fragments,  in  which  the  ancient  Gentile  poets 
should  be  made  to  express  the  elevated  sentiments  of 
Hebrew  monotheism.  Of  the  venerable  names  which 
lent  themselves  most  easily  to  this  deception 
was  that  of  Orpheus,2  lost  in  the  mists  of  my- 
thology, yet  still  living  by  the  natural  pathos  and  the 
inherent  wisdom  of  the  story.  He,  it  was  alleged,  had 
met  Moses  —  the  Greek  Musaeus  —  in  Egypt,  and  hence 
the  Orphic  poems  which  contained  so  much  of  the 
Mosaic  cosmogony.  Deeply  as  the  course  of  true  phi- 
losophy and  history  was  colored  and  perverted  by  this 
double  falsehood,  yet,  as  stated  before,  it  contained 
within  it  the  profound  truth  which  in  after  times  gradu- 
ally faded  away,  to  be  revived  only  in  our  own  age,  that 
the  comparison  of  the  mythologies  of  different  ages  re- 
veals to  us  the  same  Divinity,  the  same  morality,  "  in 
1  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners,"  throughout  all 
their  various  forms.  And  that  beautiful  legend  which 
A.ristobulus   chose  as   representing   their   union  —  the 

1  Eus.  Prcep.  Ev.,  vii.  14.  2  Ibid.,  xiii.  12. 


312  ALEXANDRIA.  Ltd.  XLVII. 

• 

figure  of  Orpheus  taming  the  savage  and  bestial  natures 
by  the  celestial  harmony  of  his  lyre  —  passed  into  the 
imagery  of  the  first  Christians  to  express  almost  with- 
out a  figure  the  reconciliation  of  the  Pagan  to  the 
Christian  World,  as  was  seen  represented  in  the  paint- 
ings of  the  Roman  Catacombs,  or  in  the  Chapel  of  Al- 
exander Severus. 

Another  name,  which,  if  not  Aristobulus  himself,  a 
The  contemporary  or    successor  borrowed   for    the 

Sibyls.  purpose  of  winning  the  favor,  not  only  of  the 
Greek,  but  of  the  now  rising  Roman  world  —  was  that 
of  the  Sibyls.  Either  under  the  seventh  or  the  eighth 
Ptolemy  there  appeared  at  Alexandria  the  oldest  of 
b.  c.  165  or  *ne  Sibylline  oracles,  bearing  the  name  of  the 
B.  c.  124.  Erythraean  Sibyl,  which,  containing  the  history 
of  the  past  and  the  dim  forebodings  of  the  future, 
imposed  alike  on  the  Greek,  Jewish,  and  Christian 
world,  and  added  almost  another  book  to  the  Canon. 
When  Thomas  of  Celano  composed  the  most  famous 
hymn  of  the  Latin  Church  he  did  not  scruple  to  place 
the  Sibyl  on  a  level  with  David  ;  and  when  Michel 
Angelo  adorned  the  roof  of  the  Sixtine  Chapel,  the 
figures  of  the  weird  sisters  of  Pagan  antiquity  are  as 
prominent  as  the  seers  of  Israel  and  Judah.  Their 
union  was  the  result  of  the  bold  stroke  of  an  Alex- 
andrian Jew ;  but  it  kept  alive,  till  the  time  when  com- 
parative theology  claimed  for  the  old  Creeds  of  the 
world  their  just  rights,  the  idea  which  a  more  isolated 
theology  overlooked,  that  those  rights  existed  and  must 
not  be  ignored.1 

1  The     2d     and    4th    portions    of  124    (Ewakl,    v.    360  ;    Abhandlung 

the  3d  Sibylline   book  are   the  old-  iiber  die  Sibyllinische  Biicher,  10-15). 

est  parts  of  the  collection,   and  be-  They  are  quoted  as  genuine  and  au- 

•ong  either  to  i$.  c.  165  (Alexandre,  thoritative  by  Josephus,  Justin,  and 

Oracula  SibyUina,  ii.  320)  or  to  u.  c.  Clement. 


Leot.  XL VII.  ARISTOBULUS.  313 

In  like  manner  the  wish  to  find  the  Grecian  grace 
and  freedom  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  was  His  endeav- 
prompted  by  the  natural  desire  to  make  the  idealize  the 
True  Religion  embrace  all  that  was  excellent  in  Scriptures. 
the  ideas  now  for  the  first  time  revealed  to  Israel  from 
beyond  the  sea.  Here  again  Aristobulus  embarked  on  a 
method  of  reconciliation,  which,  although  in  his  hands, 
so  far  as  we  know,  it  rarely  passed  the  limits  of  reason- 
able exposition,  was  destined  to  grow  into  dispropor- 
tionate magnitude,  and  exercise  a  baneful  influence 
over  the  theology  of  nearly  two  thousand  years.  He 
was  the  inventor  of  allegorical  interpretation.  For 
himself  it  was  little  if  anything  more  than  the  noble 
maxim  that  the  spirit  and  not  the  letter  is  the  essence 
of  every  great  and  good  utterance  ;  and  that,  especi- 
ally in  treating  of  the  Divine  and  of  the  Unseen,1 
metaphors  must  not  be  pressed  into  facts  nor  rhetoric 
transformed  into  logic.  This  just  principle,  in  the 
hands  of  his  followers,  was  perverted  into  a  system  by 
which  the  historical,  and  therefore  the  real,  meaning 
of  the  Sacred  Books  was  made  to  give  way  to  every 
fanciful  meaning,  however  remote  and  however  impos- 
sible, which  could  be  attached  to  the  words,  the  num- 
bers, or  the  facts.  Aristobulus  was  the  spiritual  an- 
cestor of  Philo,  and  Philo 2  was  the  immediate  parent 
of  that  fantastic  theology  which  to  most  of  the  Fathers 
and  of  the  Schoolmen  took  the  place  of  the  reasonable 
and  critical  interpretation  of  all  the  Scriptures  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  of  much  of  the  New.  Yet  still 
even  here  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  first  origin 

1  Eus.  Prcep.  Ev. ,  viii.  10  ;  spe-        2  See    Professor   Jowett's    Essay 
cially  in  reference  to  the   Hand  of     on  Philo  (Commentary  on  St.  Paul's 
God,  the  Voice  of  God,  the  descent    Epistles,  ii.  468-472). 
.in  Sinai. 

40 


314  ALEXANDRIA.  Lect.  XLVII 

of  the  allegorical  interpretation  lay  in  the  sincere  and 
laudable  effort  to  extract  from  the  coarse  materials  of 
primitive  imagery  more  elevated  truths  which  often 
lay  wrapt  up  in  them,  to  draw  out  the  ethical  and  the 
spiritual  elements  of  the  Bible,  and  to  discard  those 
which  were  temporary  and  accidental.  In  this  sense, 
if  Aristobulus  is  responsible  for  the  extravagances  of 
Philo,  of  Origen,  or  of  Cocceius,  he  may  also  claim  the 
glory  of  having  first  led  the  way  in  the  road  trodden 
long  afterwards  by  his  own  countrymen  Maimonides 
and  Spinoza,  and  by  the  Christian  followers  of  the  ra- 
tional theology  of  Hooker,  and  Cudworth,  and  Cole- 
ridge, of  Herder,  Schleiermacher,  and  Hegel.  He  was 
the  first  to  start  what  has  been 1  called  "  the  great 
u  religious  problem  —  the  discovery,  if  possible,  of  a 
"  test  by  which  we  may  discern  what  are  the  eternal 
"  and  irrepealable  truths  of  the  Bible,  what  the  imagi- 
"  native  vesture,  the  framework,  in  which  those  truths 
"  are  set  forth  in  the  Hebrew  and  even  in  the  Christian 
"  Scriptures." 

i  Milman's  AnnaU  of  St.  Paul's,  4G7. 


LECTURE  XLVIII. 
JUDAS   MACCABEUS.    B.C.  175-163. 


AUTHORITIES. 


HISTORICAL. 


'  1 )  1  Maccabees  —  Greek  translation  of  a  lost  Hebrew  original,  which 
bore  the  name  of  Sarbath  Sar  Beni  El,  B.  c.  120.  It  con- 
tains the  history  from  the  accession  of  Antiochus  to  the 
death  of  Simon. 

2  Maccabees  —  Greek  abridgment  of  a  lost  work  of  Jason  of  Cy- 

rene,  B.C.  160,  in  five  books,  b.  c.  100-50.  It  contains 
the  history  from  the  accession  of  Antiochus  to  the  death  of 
Judas,  with  legendary  additions. 

3  Maccabees  —  Greek.     No  Latin  translation,  and  therefore  in  the 

Greek  Bible,  but  not  in  the  Roman,  Lutheran,  or  English 
Bible,  b.  c.  50  ?  It  contains  the  account  of  the  persecu- 
tions by  Ptolemy  Philopator. 

4  Maccabees  —  Greek  —  wrongly  ascribed  to  Josephus,  but  print- 

ed in  his  works,  b.  c.  4?  It  contains  an  amplification 
of  2  Mace.  vi.  18,  vii.  42. 

5  Maccabees  —  A  late  work,   certainly   after  A.  d.  70  —  known 

only  in  Arabic  and  Syriac.     It  contains  the  history  both  of 
the  Asmoneans  and  of  Herod. 
These  five  books  were  published  in  one  English  volume  by  Arch- 
deacon Cotton,  1832. 
(2)   Josephus  Ant.  xii.  5-11,  B.  J.  i.  1,  A^  d.  71. 

PROPHETIC  AND  POETICAL. 

(1)  Daniel  —  probably  b.c.  167-164.     (See  Note  on  Lecture  XLII.J 

(2)  Psalms  lxxiv.,  lxxix. 

(3)  Psalter  of  Solomon  (Fabricius,  Codex  Pseud,  v.  i.,  p.  914-999)  — 

B.C.  167-162? 

(4)  Sibylline  Books,  iii.  2,  3.     b.  c.  165,  or  b.  c.  124. 


(1)   Diodorus  Siculus,  xxxiv.  4,  xl.  1. 
•v2)   Polybius,  xxvi.  10,  xxxi,  3,  4. 
;3)  Livy,  xli.  21. 


LECTURE   XLVIII. 

JUDAS    MACCABiEUS. 

The  close  connection  between  the  Jews  of  Palestine 
and  the  Ptolemsean  dynasty  received  a  rude  shock  in 
the  outrage  of  Ptolemy  *  Philopator ;  and,  as  at  the 
same  time  they  had  been  on  friendly  terms  with  An- 
tiochus  III.,2  from  the  time  of  his  victory  over  the' 
Egyptian  forces  by  the  source  of  the  Jordan  at  Paneas, 
their  allegiance  was  gradually  transferred  to  the  Sy- 
rian kingdom.  At  this  point,  therefore,  we  turn  from 
Alexandria  to  Antioch,  from  Egypt  to  Syria. 

In  the  northern  extremity  of  Syria,  where 3  "  the 
"fourth  river"  of  the   Lebanon  ranees,  after 

ii  n  •       •        i       Antioch. 

having  risen  from  its  abundant  fountain  in  the 
centre  of  those  hills,  bends  through  the  rich  plains  to 
escape  into  the  Mediterranean  out  of  the  pressure  of 
the  ridges  of  Mount  Casius  and  Mount  Amanus,  the 
first  Seleucus  founded  the  city  to  which,  after  his 
father  Antiochus,  he  gave  the  name  of  Antioch  —  a  city 
destined  to  owe  its  chief  celebrity  not  to  its  Grecian, 
but  its  Semitic  surroundings  ;  destined  in  sacred  as- 
sociations in  one  sense  to  outshine  Jerusalem  itself.4 

It  would  almost  seem  as  if  Alexandria  and  Antioch 
had  divided  between  them  the  two  characteristics  of 
the  old  metropolis  of  the  primeval  world.     If  Alexan- 

1  Rapliall,  i.  186.    Josephus,  Ant.,         8  Sinai  and  Palestine,  ii.  xiv. 
xii.  3,  3.  4  Acts  xi.  26. 

2  His  reign  is  briefly  described  in 
Dan.  xi.  11-19. 


318  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  LKcr.  XLVUI. 

dria  represented  the  learning  and  commerce  of  Babylon 
—  the  nobler  elements  of  ancient  civilization  —  Antioch 
represented  its  splendor,  its  luxury,  its  vanities.  And, 
accordingly,  whilst  the  relations  of  Israel  to  the  Ptole- 
mies are  almost  all  pacific  and  beneficent,  its  relations 
to  the  Seleucidse  are  almost  all  antagonistic  and  re- 
pulsive. 

Sometimes  the  thought  occurs  whether  it  was  pos- 
sible for  the  Judaism  of  Palestine  to  have  absorbed 
the  genial  and  artistic  side  of  the  Grecian  polytheism, 
as,  in  fact,  the  Judaism  of  Alexandria  did  to  a  large 
Antigonusof  extent  absorb  the  speculative  and  spiritual 
H.  c.  198.  side  of  the  Grecian  Philosophy.  An  honored 
name  appears  at  the  opening  of  the  struggle  on  which 
we  are  now  entering  —  Antigonus  of  Socho,  who  was 
regarded  as  the  founder  of  some  such  attempt  to  com- 
bine a  broader  view  of  religion  with  the  Judaic  auster- 
ity handed  down  from  Ezra.  One  saying  of  his  alone 
remains,  but  it  is  full  of  significance  and  shows  how  a 
seed  of  a  future  faith  had  already  borne  fruit  in  that 
dark  and  troubled  time.  "  Be  not  like  those  servants 
"  who  busy  themselves  to  serve  their  masters  in  the 
"  hope  of  reward,  but  be  like  those  servants  who  busy 
"  themselves  to  serve  their  masters  without  expectation 
"of  recompense,  and  the  favor  of  Heaven  be  over  you."1 

But  whatever  was  the  higher  aspect  of  the  Grecian 
party  in  Judcea  was  speedily  cast  into  the  shade  by  the 
deadly  struggle  which  was  now  to  be  waged  between 
the  accursed  "  kingdom  of  Javan," 2  as  the  Syrian 
dynasty  was  called  and  the  stern  patriots  who  saw  in 
conflict  of  its  policy  the  attempt  to  suppress  all  that  had 
uui'the919  sanctified  and  ennobled  their  national  exist- 
ehasdim.    ence      jn  thig  struggle  two  parties  only  were 

1  EwaVl,  v.  275;  comp.  Luke  xvii.  10.  2  Derenbourg,  56. 


Iiect.  XLVIH.  CONFLICT  WITH   HELLENISM.  310 

recognized  by  its  historian,  the  "  Chasidim  "  or  "  pious," ' 
—  a  name  already  familiar  in  the  Psalter  —  and  their 
opponents,  to  whom  was  given  the  opprobrious  designa- 
tion also  borrowed  from  the  Psalter,  "  sinners,"  "  law- 
"  less,"  "  impious."  2 

The  aggression  on  the  part  of  the  Syrian  kings  had 
already  begun  in  the  reign  of  Seleucus  IV., 
with  the  encouragement  of  the  Hellenizing 
party,  for  the  moment  headed  by  one  of  the  mischiev- 
ous clan 3  known  as  the  sons  of  Tobias.  The  first  at- 
tempt was  on  the  Temple  treasures,  including  the  pri- 
vate deposits,  which  as  in  a  bank  had  been  laid  up  for 
the  widows  and  orphans  under  the  shelter  of  the  sanct- 
uary.4 Then  it  was  that  occurred  the  scene  portrayed 
in  the  liveliest  colors  in  the  traditions  of  the  next 
century,5  when  Heliodorus  the  king's  treasurer6 

.  ,  ,  ,  °.         .  T      .    -Heliodorus. 

came  with  an  armed  guard  to  seize  it.  It  is 
a  complete  representation  of  what  must  have  been  the 
general  aspect  of  a  panic  in  Jerusalem.  The  Priests 
in  their  official  costume  are  prostrate  before  the  altar. 
The  High  Priest  is  in  such  "  an  inward  agony  of  mind 
"  that  whoso  had  looked  at  his  countenance  and  chang- 
"  ing  color,  it  would  have  wounded  his  heart."  The 
Temple  courts  are  crowded  with  supplicants  ;  the  ma- 
trons, with  bare  bosoms,  running  frantically  through 
the  street ;   the  maidens,  unable  to  break  their  seclu- 

1  $<rtoi,    evo-efcTs,    Psalms    xxx.    5 ;        3  See  Lecture  XLVLT. 
xxxi.  24;  xxxvii.  28;  lxxix.  2;  cxxxii.         *  2  Mace.  iii.  4. 

9.  It  means  "kind,"  and  is,  there-  8  2  Mace.  iii.  15-21. 
fore,  in  this  sense  (like  plus  in  Latin),  6  The  chief  Syrian  officer  in  Pal- 
attentive,  as  with  filial  piety,  towards  estine  was  called  the  Tax-gatherer, 
*od.  The  Grecised  form  is  "  Assi-  &pxa>v  rrjs  <popo\oyias.  1  Mace.  i.  29; 
dean."  1  Mace.  ii.  42;  vii.  13;  2  iii.  10;  2  Mace.  v.  24.  Josephus; 
Mace  xiv.  6.  Ant.,  xii.  5,  5  (7,  1)  ;  Herzfeld,  ii 

2  1  Mace.  i.  11;  iii.  6,  8;  vi.  21;  197. 
vii.  5  :  ix.  23. 


320  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVID 

sion,  yet  peering  over  walls,  and  through  windows,  and 
at  every  door  to  catch  the  news;  the  pitiless  officer 
bent  on  discharging  his  mission.  Then  the  scene 
changes.  A  horse  with  a  terrible  rider  in  golden 
armor  dashes  into  the  Temple  precinct  and  tramples 
Helioclorus  under  foot,  whilst  on  either  side  stood  two 
magnificent  youths,  who  lash  the  prostrate  intruder 
to  the  very  verge  of  death,  from  which  he  is  only  res- 
cued by  the  prayers  of  Onias.  The  story  lives  only 
in  the  legends  of  the  time,  and  was  passed  over1  alike 
by  the  contemporary  and  the  later  historians.  But 
when  Raffaelle  wished  to  depict  the  triumph  of  Pope 
Julius  II.  over  the  enemies  of  the  Pontificate  he  could 
find  no  fitter  scene  to  adorn  forever  the  walls  of  the 
Vatican  than  that  which  represents  the  celestial  cham- 
pion, with  the  vigor  of  immortal  youth,  trampling  or, 
the  prostrate  robber. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  actual  incident  thus 
enshrined,  it  was  the  natural  prelude  to  the  undoubted 
history  which  followed.  It  was  reserved  for  the  suc- 
cessor of  Seleucus  IV.  to  precipitate  the  crisis  which 
had  been  long  expected. 

Antiochus  IV.  was  one  of  those  strange  characters 
Antiochns  in  whom  an  eccentricity  touching  insanity  on 
BPcP  175. '  the  left  and  genius  on  the  right  combined  with 
absolute  power  and  lawless  passion  to  produce  a  por- 
tentous result,  thus  bearing  out  the  two  names  by 
which  he  was  known  —  Epiplianes — "the  Brilliant,"2 
and  Epimanes,  "the  Madman."  On  the  one  hand,  even 
through  the  terrible  picture  drawn  by  the  Jewish   his- 

1  It  is  briefly  touched  in  Dan.  ix.  sudden  appearance  from  his  Roman 

21.  captivity   (Appian,  De  Rebus   S;/>:, 

3  Niebuhr,     Lectures    on    Ancient  c.  45).      "  The  Apparition  " — like 

History,  iii.  44G.     But  the  origin  of  prcesens  Deus  ;   see  Mangey's   notes 

the   name   seems  to  have  been   his  on  Philo  ad  Caium,  1039. 


Lect.  XL VIII.  ANTIOCHUS  EPIPHANES.  321 

torians,  traits 1  of  generosity  and  even  kindness  tran- 
spire. And  in  his  splendid  buildings,2  his  enlargement 
and  almost  creation  of  Antioch  as  a  magnificent  capital 
—  his  plans  for  joining  it  with  the  bay  of  Scanderoon 
and  thus  making  it  a  maritime3  emporium  —  his  mu- 
nificence throughout  the  Grecian  world,  his  determina- 
tion, however  mischievous  in  its  results,  of  consolid- 
ating a  homogeneous  Eastern  Empire  against  the 
aggressions  of  the  newly-rising  Empire  of  the  West  — 
there  is  a  grandeur  of  conception  which  corresponds  to 
the  contemporary  Prophetic  delineation  of  "  the  king 
"  of  an  invincible  countenance,  understanding  claik 
"sentences  and  full  of  high  swelling4  words."  On  the 
other  hand,  there  was  an  extravagance,  a  littleness,  in 
all  his  demeanor,  which  agrees  with  the  unintelligible 
madman  of  the  Gentile  writers  "the  vile  person"  of 
the  Hebrew  poets  and  historians.  They  saw,  instead 
of  the  literary  Ptolemies  or  the  godlike  Alexander, 
a  fantastic  creature  without  dignity  or  self-control, 
caricaturing  in  a  public  masquerade  the  manners  and 
dress  of  the  august  Roman  magistrates,  playing  prac- 
tical jokes  in  the  public  streets  and  baths  of  Antioch, 
startling  a  group  of  young  revellers  by  bursting  in 
upon  them  with  pipe  and  horn ;  tumbling  with  the 
bathers  on  the  slippery  marble  pavement,5  as  they  ran 
to  receive  the  shower  of  precious  ointment  which  he 
had  prepared  for  himself.  The  contradiction  of  the 
two  sides  of  his  character  was  wound  up  to  its  climax 
in  the  splendor  of  the  procession  which  he  organized 
at  Daphne,  in  the   most  stately  style,  to  outshine  the 

1  2  Mace.   iv.   3,    7;   vii.  12,   24;         *  Dan.  xi.  36.    See  Ewald,  v.  293 ; 
somp.  Diod.  Sic.,  xxxiv.  1,  who  sees  this  in  the  Rabbinica.  iEpy 

-i  Liv.  xli.  21.  stomus  —  "  swelling  mouth." 

3  2  Mace.  v.  21.  5  Diod.  Sic.,  xxxi.  3,  4. 

41 


322  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVHI 

most  magnificent  of  the  Roman  triumphs,  but  in  which 
he  himself  appeared  riding  in  and  out  on  a  hack  pony, 
playing  the  part  of  chief  waiter,1  mountebank,  and 
jester. 

It  was  a  union  of  lofty  policy  and  petty  buffoonery,  of 
high  aspirations  and  small  vexations,  which  reminds 
us  of  the  attempts  of  Peter  the  Great  to  occidentalize 
Russia ;  as  in  the  opposition  of  the  old  Muscovite  party 
and  of  the  Rascolniks  we  have  a  resemblance2  of  the 
determined  antagonism  of  the  "  Chasidim  "  to  the  Hel- 
lenization  of  their  race.  But  Peter's  attempt  was 
founded  on  a  far-seeing  principle  —  that  of  Antiochus 
on  a  short-sighted  fancy.  The  resistance  of  the  Russian 
Dissenters  was  the  mere  tenacity  of  ancient  prejudice. 
The  resistance  of  the  Jewish  patriots  was  the  determi- 
nation of  a  superior  faith. 

To  bring  into  a  uniform  submission  to  himself  and 
the  Gods  of  Greece,  amongst  whom  he  reckoned  him- 
self, the  various  creeds  and  usages  which  he  found 
under  his  sway  became  his  fixed  idea,  fostered  in  part 
by  his  own  personal  vanity,  partly  by  the  desire  to 
imitate  the  Roman  policy,  which  he  had  studied  whilst 
a  hostage  in  Rome.  In  this  design  he  was  assisted  by 
the  Grecian  party,  of  which  we  have  spoken,  in  Pales- 
tine itself.  The  passion  for  Grecian  connections  showed 
itself  in  the  desire  to  establish  a  claim  of  kindred  with 
the  Lacedaemonians,  amongst  whom  a  Jewish  colony 
seems  to  have  been  established,3  and  with  whom  a  cor- 
respondence was  alleged,  as  if  Sparta  too,  in  her  fallen 
state,  was  eager  to  cultivate  friendly  relations  with 
them.    The  names  of  the  Macedonian4  months,  hitherto 

1  Polyb.,  xxvi.  10.  9;   xii.  5,   23;  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv. 

2  Lecture  IX.  on  the  Eastern  10,  22.  See  Herzfeld,  ii.  202,  216- 
Church.  219. 

»  1  Mace  xiv.  16-29;  2  Mace.  v.         4  Clinton's  Fasti  Hellenici,  iii.  376. 


Lbct.  XL VIII.  THE   GRECIAN  PARTY.  323 

unknown,  were  adopted  either  beside  or  instead  of  the 
Hebrew  or  Chaldsean  nomenclature.  The  fever  ot 
Grecian  fashions  manifested  itself  in  the  Grecian 
nomenclature  by  which  the  ancient  Hebrew  names 
were  superseded  or  corrupted.  We  have  already  seen 
how  the  central  Judaic  settlement  had  been  The  Grecian 
surrounded  by  a  fringe  of  Grecian  towns.  We  party* 
now  encounter  the  same  tendency  in  the  heart  of  every 
Jewish  family.1  Jehoiakim  becomes  Alcimus ;  Solomon 
from  analogy  of  the  great  Jewish  and  the  great  Gentile 
King,  becomes  Alexander ;  Salome,  Alexandra  ;  Onias, 
or  Joseph,  is  transformed  into  Menelaus;  Judas  be- 
comes Aristobulus;  Mattathias,  Antigonus;  John  or 
Jonathan,  Hyrcanus  or  Jannseus ; 2  Joshua  sometimes 
becomes  Jesus,  sometimes  the  Argonautic  hero  Jason, 
sometimes  Alexander,  in  its  etymological  sense  of 
Champion.  The  era  observed  by  the  Jews  in  theii 
civil  contracts,3  even  till  a.d.  1040,  was  the  era  of  the 
Seleucidse,  still  observed  by  Eastern  Christians  as  the 
era  of  Alexander,  and  adopted  by  the  Syrian  kingdom 
from  October,  B.C.  312  —  when  the  world  seemed  to 
begin  again  from  the  victory  by  which  Seleucus  wrested 
from  Antigonus  the  ancient  capital  of  Chaldgea,  which 
even  in  its  ruin  was  the  prize  of  the  East. 

The  High  Priesthood,  like  the  modern  Patriarchates, 
was  sold  by  the  foreign  Government,  in  the  needy  con- 
dition of  the  Syrian  finances,  to  the  highest  bidder,  and 
amongst  the  various  rivals  Jason  succeeded,  who  added 
to  his  bribes  the  attempt  to  win  the  favor  of  Antiochus 
by  adopting  the  Gentile  usages.  It  is  startling  to  think 
of  the  sudden  influx  of  Grecian  manners  into  the  very 

1  So  in  the  endeavor  to  approach     trius  is   Edward,  Basil  is  William, 
the    usages    of    Russia    to   western     &c. 
Europe,   Andrew  is  Henry,   Deme-        2  Derenbourg,  53. 

»  Raphall,  i.  98. 


324  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XL  VIII 

centre  of  Palestine.  The  modesty  of  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  Abraham  was  shocked  by  the  establish* 
ment  of  the  Greek  palaestra,  under  the  very  citadel x  of 
David,  where,  in  defiance  of  some  of  the  most  sensitive 
feelings  of  their  countrymen,  the  most  active  of  the 
Jewish  youths  completely  stripped  themselves  and  ran, 
wrestled,  leaped  in  the  public  sports,  like  the  Grecian 
athletes,  wearing  only  the  broad-brimmed  hat 2  in  imi- 
tation of  the  headgear  of  the  God  Hermes,  guardian  of 
the  gymnastic  festivals.  Even  the  priests  in  the  Temple 
caught  the  infection,3  left  their  sacrificial  duties  unfin- 
ished, and  ran  down  from  the  Temple  court  to  take 
part  in  the  spectacle  as  soon  as  they  heard  the  signal 
for  throwing  the  discus,  which  was  to  lead  off  the 
games.  The  sacred  names  of  Jerusalem  and  Judaea 
were  laid  aside  in  favor  of  the  title  of  "  citizens  of  An- 
"tioch."4  A  deputation5  of  these  would-be  Greeks  was 
sent  by  "the  hateful  Jason"  to  a  likeness6  of  the 
Olympian  festival  celebrated  in  the  presence  of  the 
King  at  Tyre,  in  honor  of  the  ancient  sanctuary  of 
Moloch 7  or  Melcart,  now  transformed  into  the  Grecian 
Hercules;  though  here,  with  a  curious  scruple  which 
-withheld  the  pilgrims  from  going  the  whole  length  with 
their  chief,  they  satisfied  their  consciences  by  spending 
the  money8  intended  for  the  sacrifice  in  the  building  of 

i  virb  tV  o.Kp6iro\iv,  2  Mace.  iv.  12.  5  6ewp6s,  the  usual  word  for  relig- 

2  Ibid.,    virb  tV  Triraffov.      So    in  ious   deputations,  like  that   sent   to 

tie  Panathenaic  frieze.     So  Suidas.  Delos. 

"  The  athletes  wore  hats  and  sashes"  62  Mace.  iv.  18.  Five-yearly 
(in  voce,  ir€piayvp6fi.a>oi).  games  like  the  Olympians. 
8  2  Mace.  iv.  14.  7  Comp.  Herod,  ii.  44.  He  was 
4  Coins  exist  with  'Avnoxeuv  tuv  equally  the  god  of  Carthage.  Com- 
fy riToAe'jUaiSi,  as  though  there  was  pare  Hannibal's  vision,  Liv.,  xxi.  22. 
also  such  a  corporation  of  "  Anti-  8  2  Mace.  iv.  19-20.  300  drachms. 
'  ochians  "  at  Ptolemais.  Grimm  on  This  seeming  too  small  a  sum,  some 
2  Mace  iv.  18.  MSS.read  3,000.  But.asan  Egpytian 


Lect.  XL VIII.  THE   GRECIAN  PARTY.  325 

the  war-galleys  of  the  Syrian  navy.  With  these  lax 
imitations  of  the  Pagan  worship,  the  corruptions  of  the 
Priesthood  became  more  and  more  scandalous.  Mene- 
laus  outbid  Jason  for  the  office.     Their  brother 

b.c.  172. 

Onias  took  refuge  from  his  violence  in  the 
sanctuary  of  Apollo  at  Daphne,  near  Antioch,  and  was 
thence  dragged  forth  and  killed,  with  a  sacrilegious  per- 
fidy which  shocked  Jew  and  heathen  alike,  and  called 
out  almost  the  only  sign  of  human  feeling  which  the 
Jewish  annalist  allows  to  the  Syrian  King.1  Onias 
himself,  like  a  Becket  or  a  Stanislaus,  was  transformed 
by  a  popular  apotheosis  into  the  celestial  champion 2  of 
his  nation  ;  and  a  long-standing  monument  of  the  hor- 
ror created  by  his  murder  was  the  rival  temple  at  He- 
liopolis,  built  by  his  son  Onias,  who  fled  from  Palestine 
on  hearing  of  his  father's  death,  as  though  there  were 
no  longer  a  home  or  a  sanctuary  for  him  in  Palestine.3 
Jason  himself,  after  a  momentary  victory  over  his 
brother  Menelaus  in  Jerusalem,  was  expelled,  and 
closed  a  wandering  exile  by  dying  amongst  the  Spartan 
mountains.  "  And  he  that  had  cast  out  many  unburied 
"  had  none  to  mourn  for  him,  nor  any  solemn  funerals 
"at  all,  nor  sepulchre  with  his  fathers."4 

In  the  midst  of  this  dissolution  of  Jewish  society  it  is 
no  wonder  that  to  the  tension  of  imagination  which 
such  a  time  produces  portents  should  have  appeared  — 
such  as  we  find  not  only  in  the  final  siege  of  Jerusalem, 
but  in  the  Gothic  invasion  of  ancient  Rome,  in  the 
plague  of  Papal  Rome,  in  the  fall  of  the  Empire  of  Mon- 
tezuma in  Mexico,  in  the  Plague  of  London,  in  the 

Jew,  the  writer  reckons  by  the  Alex-  the   Prince   of   the   Covenant,   Dan. 

andrian  drachm,  which  was  twice  as  xi.  22. 

tiuch  as  the  Athenian  (Grimm).  8  See  Lecture  XL VII. 

1  2  Mace.  iv.  34-37.  *  2  Mace.  v.  5-10. 

2  Ibid.,  xv.   12.     He  is,  perhaps, 


326  JUDAS  MACCABjEUS.  Lect.  XL VIII 

French  war  of  1870.  It  happened  that  "through1  all 
"  the  city,  for  the  space  almost  of  forty  days,  there 
"were  seen  horsemen  galloping  through  the  air,  in 
"  cloth  of  gold,  and  armed  with  lances  like  a  band  of 
"soldiers,  and  squadrons  of  cavalry  in  array,  and 
"charges,  and  encounters,  and  shaking  of  shields,  and 
"  multitude  of.  pikes,  and  drawing  of  swords,  and  glit- 
"  tering  of  golden  ornaments,  and  harness  of  all  sorts." 
The  prayer  "  that  this  apparition  might  turn  for  good  " 
was  presently  answered  by  the  approach  of  the  most 
startling  catastrophe  which  the  Jewish  colony  had  ex- 
perienced since  its  return  from  Babylon,  and  which  yet, 
with  a  fine  moral  sense  of  a  deserved  Nemesis,  the 
nobler  spirits  among  them  acknowledged  to  be  the  just 
retribution  for  their  crimes. 

It  was  after  completing  his  conquest  of  Egypt  that 
Attack  on  Antioclius,  in  pursuit  at  once  of  his  political 
Jerusalem.  an(j  religi0us  ambition,  seized  upon  Jerusalem. 
The  terrified  population  fled  before  him.  They  were 
hewn  clown  in  the  streets  ;  they  were  pursued  tc 
the  roofs  of  their  houses.2  But  that  which  even 
more  than  this  widespread  massacre  thrilled  the  city 
with  consternation  was  the  sight  of  the  King,  in  all 
the  pomp  of  royalty,  led  by  the  apostate  3  Menelaus 
into  the  sanctuary  itself.  It  was  believed  by  the  Greek 
world  that  he  reached  the  innermost  recess  and  there 
found  the  statue  of  the  founder  of  the  nation  —  the 
great  lawgiver   Moses  —  with  the  long  flowing  beard 

1  2  Mace.  v.  2-4.     Compare  Plu-  nomenon  in  Italy  in   Lord  Lome's 

tarch,    Marius,    c.    76  ;    Humboldt,  Guido  and  Lita. 

Kosmos,    i.    145.     Dean    Milman   (i.  2  1   Mace.   i.   20-27;    2   Mace.   v. 

461)  compares  with  this  the  descrip-  11-16. 

'.ion  of  the  Aurora  Borealis  in  his  8  Diod.  Sic.,  xxxiv.  1;  see  Lecture 

own   Samor,  to  which  we  may  add  IV. 
the  striking  picture  of  a  like  phe- 


Lect.  XL VIII.  THE   GRECIAN  PARTY.  327 

which  tradition  assigned  to  him,  and  seated  on  the 
Egyptian  ass,  from  the  time  of  the  Exodus  down  to  the 
second  century  of  our  era  the  inseparable  accompani- 
ment of  the  Israelite.  With  characteristic  rapacity  he 
laid  hands  on  the  sacred  furniture  which  the  wealthy 
Babylonian  Jews  had  contributed  through  the  hands  of 
Ezra  —  the  golden  altar  of  incense,  the  golden  candle- 
stick, the  table  of  consecrated  bread,  and  all  the  lesser 
ornaments  and  utensils.  The  golden  candlestick,  which 
was  an  object  of  especial  interest  from  its  containing 
the  perpetual  light,  was  traditionally  believed  to  have 
fallen  to  the  share  of  the  renegade  High  Priest  Mene- 
laus.1  The  great  deposits  which  had  escaped  the  grasp 
of  Heliodorus,  and  which,  but  for  the  national  deprav- 
ity, would,  it  was  thought,  have  been  again  defended 
by  celestial  champions,  were  seized  by  the  king  himself. 

Then  came  another  sudden  attack  under  Apollonius 
the  tax-gatherer,  successor  of  Heliodorus,  who  took 
occasion  to  attack  them  on  their  day  of  weekly  rest, 
scattering  them  or  dragging  them  off  to  the  slave-mar- 
ket from  the  midst  of  their  festivities.2  It  is  a  strat- 
agem which  occurs  so  often  at  this  time  as  to  lose  its 
point,  but  which  shows  how  rigidly  since  Nehemiah's 
time  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath  had  set  in.  The 
rest,  both  of  the  seventh  day  and  of  the  seventh  year, 
had  now  become  a  fixed  institution,  guarded  with  the 
utmost  tenacity,  and  carried  into  the  most  trivial  and, 
at  times,8  impracticable  details. 

There  was  a  short  pause,  during  which  consternation 
spread  through  the  country.  In  every  home  there  was 
desolation  as  if  for  a  personal  sorrow.     The  grief  of  the 

1  See  Derenbourg,  53.  xiv.    10,    6  ;    see    Farrar's   Life  oj 

2  1  Mace.  i.  29-37  ;  2  Mace.  vi.  24.     Christ,  i.  431-432. 

3  1  Mace.  vi.  49;  Josephus,  Ant., 


328  JTJDAS  MACCABiEUS.  Lect   XLVII1 

women  was  even  more  affecting  than  the  indignant 
Borrow  1  of  the  men  ;  and  showed  how  completely  they 
shared  the  misfortunes  of  their  country.  The  H0I3' 
City  was  transformed  into .  the  likeness  of  a  Grecian 
garrison.  The  walls  that  Nehemiah  had  built  with  so 
much  care  were  dismantled ;  the  houses  in  their  neigh- 
borhood were  burnt;  another  massacre  and  another  cap- 
tivity followed.  The  blood  ran  through  the  streets  and 
even  in  the  Temple  courts.  The  hill  on  which  had  stood 
the  Palace  of  David  was  fortified  with  a  separate  wall, 
took  the  name  of  "The  Height"  ("  Acra"),  and  was 
occupied  writh  the  Greek  or  Grecian  party,  the  more  ir- 
ritating to  those  who  still  adhered  to  their  country  and 
their  faith  because  it  overlooked  the  Temple  itself.  It 
was  regarded  as  a  perpetual  tempter,  an  adversary  2  or 
devil  in  stone  —  as  a  personal  enemy.  And  over  this 
fortress  presided  Philip,  of  rough  Phrygian  manners, 
and,  more  odious  than  all,  the  High  Priest  Menelaus, 
"  who  bore  a  heavy  hand  over  all  the  citizens,  hav- 
"  ing  a  malicious  hatred  against  his  countrymen  the 
"  Jews." 

But  the  worst  was  still  to  come.     As  soon  as  the  en- 
tanglements of  Antiochus  in  his  Egyptian  war 

11.  C.  108.  -i   -i   •  •         t*       t  •     n       •  • 

allowed  him  a  respite  for  his  Syrian  projects  he 
determined  on  carrying  out  his  fixed  plans  of  a  rigid 
uniformity  throughout  the  land  —  "  that  all  should  be 
"  one  people  and  that  every  one  should  hear  his  laws." 
There  was  not  a  corner  of  Judaaa  which  was  not  now 
invaded  by  the  emissaries  of  Polytheism,  rendered  yet 
more  hateful  by  the  assistance  received  from  renegade 
Israelites.  A  special  commissioner  was  set  to  preside 
Dver    this   forced   conversion;  it  is  uncertain  whether 

l  1  Mace.  i.  '-'<;   27.  the  translation  of  the  Hebrew  word 

9  1  Mace.  i.  36,  Sid$o\ov  irovt\p6v,     Satan.     See  Lecture  XLV. 


Lect.  XL VIII.  THE   GEECIAN  PARTY.  329 

from  Antioch,  or,  as  if  to  introduce  the  new  worship 
from  its  most  genuine  seat,  from  Athens.1  Under  him. 
adopting  the  existing  framework  of  the  Jewish  constitu- 
tion for  the  purpose,  "  overseers  "  (as  we  have  already 
seen 2  expressed  in  the  Greek  original  by  the  word 
which  has  passed  into  "  Bishops")  were  sent  through- 
out the  several  districts  both  of  Judasa  and  Sama- 
ria. The  Divinity  to  whom  the  Holy  Mount  of  Jeru- 
salem was  to  be  dedicated  was  the  Father  of  Gods  and 
men,  in  whose  honor  Antiochus  had  already  begun  at 
Athens  the  stately  temple,  even  in  his  own  age  a 
wonder  of  the  world,3  of  which  the"  magnificent  ruins 
still  stand  on  the  banks  of  the  Ilissus — Jupiter  Olym- 
pius.  On  Mount  Gerizim  —  apparently  because  the 
Samaritans  gave  the  new  worship  a  more  hospitable 
welcome  —  was  planted  the  sanctuary  of  the  patron  of 
hospitality  —  Jupiter  Xenius.4 

The  gay  Dionysiac  festival  was  also  established,  and 
the  grave  Israelites  were  compelled  to  join  in  the 
Bacchanalian  processions  with  wreaths  of  ivy  round 
their  heads  —  .sometimes  with  the  mark  of  the  5  ivy- 
leaf  branded  into  their  skins.  The  King's  own  special 
deity  was  not  of  his  Grecian  ancestry,  but  one  bor- 
rowed from  Rome  —  whether  the  War-God  Mars, 
Father  of  the  Roman  people,  or  Jupiter  of  the  Capi- 
toline  Rock,  to  whom  he  began  to  build  a  splendid 
temple  at  Antioch  —  in  either  case,  filling  even  the 
Jews,  to  whom  all  these  divinities  might  have  been 
thought  equally  repugnant,  with  a  new  thrill  of  sorrow, 
is  indicating  a  disrespect  even  of  the  religions  of  his 

1  2  Mace.  vi.  1.     Ewald,  v.  298.  "Jupiter  Hellenius."     But  this,  as 

2  See  Lecture  XLIV.  the  name  of  the  local  Jupiter  wor« 

3  Polyb.  xxvi.  10.  shipped  at  JEgina,  seems  less  likely 
Josephus,  Ant.,  xii.  v.  5,   says  8  2  Mace.  vi.  7;  3  Mace.  ii.  29. 

42 


330  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVKL 

own  race  ;  and  introducing  a  strange  and  terrible 
name.  "  He  regarded  not  the  God  of  his  fathers,1  he 
"honored  the  God  of  forces,  a  God  whom  his  fathers 
"knew  not  "  —  a  God  whose  temples  were  fortresses. 

In  every  town  and  village  of  the  country  were 
erected  altars,  at  which  the  inhabitants  were  compelled 
to  offer  sacrifices  in  the  heathen  form,  and  on  the 
King's  birthday  to  join  in  the  sacrificial  feast.  The 
two  chief  external  marks  of  Judaism  —  the  repose  of 
the  Sabbath  and  the  proud  badge  of  ancient  civiliza- 
tion, the  rite  of2  circumcision  —  were  strictly  for- 
bidden on  pain  of*  death.  And  at  last  the  crowning 
misery  of  all,  which  sent  a  shock  through  the  whole 
community,  was  the  deliberate  desecration  of  the 
Temple,  not  only  by  adapting  it  to  Grecian  worship, 
but  by  every  species  of  outrage  and  dishonor.  The 
great  gates  were  burned.  The  name  of  the  officer  who 
had  charge  of  setting  fire  to  them  was  known  and 
marked  3  out  —  Callisthenes.  Its  smooth  and  well-kept 
courts  were  left  to  be  overgrown  by  rank  vegetation, 
in  the  shelter  of  which,  as  in  the  groves  of  Daphne, 
the  licentious  rites  of  Antioch  were  carried  on.4 

And  now  came  the  culminating  horror.  It5  was  the 
The  23d  of  the  month  Mareschvan  (November)  that 

tton'ofna"  the  enclosure  was  broken  between  the  outer 
Desolation.  an(j  imier  court ;  in  after  days  the  breaches 
were  pointed  out  in  thirteen  places.6  On  the  15th  of 
December,  the  next  month  (Chisleu — December)  a  small 
b.c.  168.  Grecian  altar  was  planted  on  the  huge  platform 
Df  the  altar  of  Zerubbabel  in  honor  of  the  Olympian 

1  Dan.  xi.  38,  39.  4  2  Mace.  vi.  4;  1  Mace.  iv.  38. 

2  See  Lectures  I.,  XL.  8  For  these  dates  see  Derenbourg 
9  2  Mace.  viii.  33.                                 60-64;  Griitz,  iii.  419-420. 

«  Dan.  ix.  27. 


Lect.  xlvhi.    the  desecration  of  the  temple.  331 

Jupiter.  On  the  25th  the  profanation  was  consum- 
mated by  introducing  a  herd  of  swine  and  slaughtering 
them  in  the  sacred  precincts.  One  huge  sow  was  chosen 
from  the  rest.  Her  blood  was  poured  on  the  altar  be- 
fore the  Temple  and  on  the  Holy  of  Holies  within.  A 
mess  of  broth  was  prepared  from  the  flesh,  and  sprinkled 
on  the  copies  of  the  Law.1  This  was  the  "  abomination 
"  of  desolation  "  —  the  horror  which  made  the  whole 
place  a  desert.  From  that  moment  the  daily  offerings 
ceased,  the  perpetual  light  of  the  great  candlestick  was 2 
extinguished  —  the  faithful  Israelites  fled  from  the  pre- 
cincts. When,  in  the  last  great  pollution  of  Jerusalem 
under  the  Romans,  a  like  desecration  was  attempted, 
no  other  words  could  be  found  more  solemn  than  those 
already  used  in  regard  to  the  Syrian  distress.3  But  the 
persecution  was  not  confined  to  the  extirpation  of  the 
national  worship.  Every  Jew  was  constrained  to  con- 
form to  the  new  system.  The  children  were  no  longer 
to  receive  the  initiatory  rite  of  circumcision.  The 
swine's  flesh  was  forced  into  the  mouths  of  the  reluct- 
ant worshippers,  who  were  compelled  to  offer  the  un- 
clean animal  on  altars  erected  at  every  door  and  in 
every  street.  The  books  of  the  Law,  multiplied  and 
treasured  with  so  much  care  from  the  days  of  Ezra,  were 
burnt.  Many  assisted  and  bowed  before  the  oppressor. 
One  example  was  long  held  in  horror,  which  shows 
that  there  were  some  who  welcomed  the  intrusion  with 
delight.  There  was  a  daughter  of  the  priestly  order  of 
Bilgah,  Miriam,  who  had  married  a  Syrian  officer,  and 
with  him  entered  the  Temple,  and,  as  they  approached 

1  Diod.  Sic,  xxxiv.  1.     Josephus,     this  took  place  in  the  earlier  outrages 
int.,  xii.  5,  §  4.  of  1  Mace.  i.  21. 

2  Diod.  Sic,  xxxiv.  1.     Probably         8  1  Mace  i.  54;  Dan.  ix.  27;  xii. 

11 ;  Matt.  xxiv.  15;  Mark  xiii.  14. 


332  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVJJI 

the  altar,  she  struck  the  altar  with  her  shoe,  exclaim- 
ing, "  Thou  insatiable  wolf,  how  much  longer  art  thoi. 
"  to  consume  the  wealth  of  Israel,  though  thou  canst 
"not  help  them  in  their  hour  of  need?"  It  was  the 
remembrance  of  the  rapacity  of  her  family,1  so  it  was 
said,  that  drove  her  into  this  fierce  reaction.  When 
The  Perse-  the  worship  was  restored,  the  disgrace  which 
ration.  g|ie  jia(^  brQyg^t  on  the  order  was  perpetuated, 
and  they  alone  of  the  priestly  courses  had  no  separate 
store-room,  or  separate  rings  for  their  victims.  But 
others  dared  the  worst  rather  than  submit.  Some  con- 
cealed themselves  in  the  huge  caverns  in  the  neigh- 
boring hills,  and  were  there  suffocated  by  fires  lighted 
at  the  mouth.  Two  mothers  were  hanged  on  the  wall, 
with  their  dead  babes  at  their  breasts,  whom  they  had 
circumcised.  A  venerable  scribe2  of  ninety  years  of 
age,  Eleazar,  steadily  refused  to  retain  the  hated  swine's 
flesh  in  his  mouth ;  stripped  of  his  clothes,  but,  as  the 
latest  version  finely 3  expresses  it,  wrapped  in  the  dig- 
nity of  old  age  and  piety,  like  a  fine  athlete  in  the  Gre- 
cian games,  he  walked  boldly  to  the4  rack,  on  which 
he  was  scourged  to  death.  "  I  will 5  show  myself  such 
"  an  one  as  mine  age  requireth,  and  leave  a  notable  ex- 
"  ample  to  such  as  be  young  to  die  willingly  and  cour- 
ageously for  the  honorable  and  holy  laws."  Most 
memorable  was  the  slow  torture  by  which  the  mother 
and  her  seven  sons  expired.  It  was  told  in  a  narrative 
couched,  like  the  -nartyrologies  of  Christian  times,  in 

1  Rapliall,  i.  232.  our  time,  who  sacrificed,  not  life,  but 

2  "  A   lawyer,"   vo/xi/chs,  4   Mace,     office  and  peace,  rather  than  accept 
7.  4.  •  an  historical  falsehood.      "I  am  an 

8  4  Mace.  vi.  2.  "  old  man,  and  I  cannot  go  into  the 

4  Sec  Grimm  on  2  Mace.  vi.  28.  "  presence  of  God  with  a  lie  in  my 

.  6  2  Mace.  vi.  27-28.    Compare  the  "  right  hand." 

tine  Bpeeeh  of  an  aged  theologian  of 


Lect.  XL VIII.  THE  PERSECUTION.  333 

exaggerated1  language,  and  disfiguring  the  noble  pro- 
testations of  the  sufferers  by  the  invocations  of  curses 
on  the  persecutors,  but  still  forcibly  expressing  the  liv 
ing  testimony  of  conscience  against  the  interference  of 
power,  the  triumph  of  the  spirit  over  outward  suffering. 
The  very  implements  of  torture  are  the  same  which 
have  lived  on  through  all  the  centuries  in  which  theo- 
logical hatred  and  insane  cruelty  have  overborne  the 
natural  affections  of  the  human  heart.  The  rack,  the 
wheel,  the  scourge,  the  flame,  have  been  handed  on 
from  Antiochus  to  Diocletian,  to  the  Council  of  Con- 
stance, to  Philip  II.,  to  Calvin,  to  Louis  XIV. 

These  are  the  first  of  the  noble  army  of  martyrs  to 
whom  history  has  given  a  voice.  "  Vixere  fortes  ante 
"  Agamemnona."  Those  who  were  slain  by  Jezebel 
or  Manasseh  may  have  nourished  in  their  deaths  a 
courage  as  high  and  a  faith  as  firm.  But  they  passed 
to  their  reward  in  silence.  In  the  earlier  account 
even  of  those  who  fell  under  the  tyranny  of  Antiochus, 
their  end2  is  described  with  a  severe  brevity,  which  for 
solemn  impressiveness  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired,  "  So 
"  then  they  died.  "  But  the  later  account  places  in  the 
mouths  of  the  sufferers  the  words  destined  to  animate 
the  long  succession  of  the  victims  of  religious  intoler- 
ance, whether  heathen  against  Christian,  Christian 
against  Jew,  Catholic  against  Protestant,  Protestant 
against  Protestant.  "  What  woulclst  thou  ask  or  learn  ? 
'<  We  are  ready  to  die  rather  than  transgress  the  laws 
'  of  our  fathers.  It  is  manifest  unto  the  Lord  that  hath 
"  the  holy  knowledge  that  whereas  I  might  have  been 

1  Compare  the  savage  remarks  on  on  2  Mace.  vi.  2,   12,  18;  ii.  130), 

the  scent  of   the  roasted  rlosh  -with  with  the  appearance  of  the  Roman 

the  jests  of  St.  Laurence,  and  the  in-  emperors    in    all    Christian    martyr 

troduction  of  Antiochus  on  the  scene  ologies. 

(against  all  probability,  see  Grimm  2  1  Mace.  i.  63. 


334  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XL VIII 

"  delivered  from  death,  I  now  endure  grievous  pains 
"  in  body,  but  in  soul  I  am  well  content  to  suffer  these 
"  things  because  I  fear  Him."  In  this  sense  Eleazar 
was  justly  honored  in  the  ancient  Church  as  the  Proto- 
Martyr.  The  seven  brothers  were,  by  a  bold  fiction 
of  ecclesiastical  law,  entitled  "  Christian  Martyrs  "  — 
Christianum  nomen,  loostea  dimdgatum,  factis  anteces- 
serunt} 

In  this  terrible  crisis  it  is  not  surprising  that  what- 
TheMac-  ever  sparks  of  the  spirit  of  the  Psalmist  and 
Psalms.  the  Prophet  still  lingered  should  once  more 
have  been  evoked  from  the  depths  of  the  national 
heart.  There  are  two  Psalms  at  least  —  the  74th  and 
the  79th  —  which  can  hardly  be  the  expressions  of  any 
period  but2  this.  They  describe  with  passionate  grief 
the  details  of  the  profanation  of  the  sanctuary,  the  gates 
in  flames,  the  savage  soldiers  hewing  clown  the  delicate 
carved  work,  with  axe  and  hatchet,  like  woodmen  in 
a  forest,  the  roar  of  the  irreverent  multitude,  the  erec- 
tion of  the  heathen  emblems ;  they  sigh  over  the  in- 
dignity of  the  corpses  slain  in  the  successive  massacres, 
left  outside  of  the  walls  of  the  city  to  be  devoured  by 
vulture  and  jackal  —  they  look  in  vain  for  a  Prophet  to 

1  Grimm  on  2  Mace.  133.  The  daean  capture,  but  the  arguments  are 
traditional  scene  of  their  death  was  strongly  in  favor  of  the  Maccabsean 
Antioch,  where  a  Basilica  wascrected  time.  1.  The  profanation  rather  than 
Ti  their  honor.  Their  relics  (?)  arc  the  destruction  is  insisted  upon, 
now  exhibited  in  Rome,  and  their  lxxiv.  3.  2.  The  synagogues  are 
day  is  celebrated  on  August  1.  Their  mentioned,  lxxiv.  8.  3.  The  details 
traditional  names  are  Maccabaeus,  exactly  coincide  with  the  descrip- 
Oberus,  Machiri,  Judas,  Ahaz,  Ja-  tion  in  the  Books  of  Maccabees. 
30b;  or  else  Ablis,  Gurias,  Antonius,  Compare  Psalm  lxxiv.  7;  1  Mace, 
[sleazar,  Marcellus;  their  mother's  iv.  3S;  2  Mace.  viii.  33;  i.  8.  Psalm 
dame,  Salome;  their  father's,  Arch-  lxxix.  2,  3;  1  Mace.  i.  44;  vii.  16; 
Jppus  or  Maccabaeus.  2  Mace.  v.  12,  13.     Psalm  lxxix.  9; 

2  It  is    possible    that    these    two     1  Mace.  ix.  46;  ix.  47;  xiv.  61. 
Psalms    may    belong    to    the    Chal- 


Lbot.  XLVm  THE  PERSECUTION.  335 

arjse  —  they  console  themselves  with  the  recollection 
of  the  overthrow  of  the  huge  monsters  of  the  earlier 
empires,  and  with  the  hope  that  this  crisis  will  pass  in 
like  manner. 

Another  burst1  of  anguish  was  in  the  eighteen 
Psalms  ascribed  to  Solomon,  but  probably  of  The  p;alter 
this  epoch.  In  them  we  see  the  battering-ram  of  Solo:non 
beating  clown  the  walls,  the  proud  heathens  stalking 
through  the  Temple  courts,  not  so  much  as  taking  off 
their  2  shoes ;  we  hear  the  bitter  curses  on  those  who 
endeavor  to  please  men,  and  who  dissemble  their3  own 
convictions ;  we  see  those  who  frequented  the  syna- 
gogues wandering  in  the  deserts  ; 4  we  watch  the  ex- 
pectation of  some  anointed 5  of  the  Lord  who  should, 
like  David,  deliver  them  from  their  enemies. 

But  there  was  a  yet  more  important  addition  to  the 
sacred  literature  of  this  period.  Even  those  The  Book 
who  would  place  the  composition  of  the  Book  of  DanieL 
of  Daniel  at  an  earlier  time  will  not  deny  that  this 
was  the  exact  elate  —  to  be  measured  almost  by  the 
year  and  the  month  —  when  as  a  whole  or  piecemeal 
it  made  its  appearance  and  significance  felt  throughout 
the  suffering  nation.  "  Antiochus  was  on  his  way 
"  northward  from  Egypt.  The 6  complete  suppression 
"  of  the  Temple  sacrifices  might  then  have  lasted  a 
"  twelvemonth,  and  everything  had  reached  that  state 
"  of  extreme  tension  when  the  ancient  religion  upon 
"  its  sacred  soil  must  either  disappear  from  view  com- 
"'  pletely  for  long  ages,  or  must  rise  in  fresh  strength 
kC  and  outward  power  against  enemies  thus  immoder- 

i  Comp.    Psalms   of    Solomon,  in         8  Ibid.,  iii.  21,  22. 

Fabricius,   Cod.   Pseudepig.     Ps.  ii.         4  Ibid.,  xvi.  19. 
29,  30.  5  Ibid.,  xviii.  6-10. 

3  Ibid.,  ii.  1,  2.  «  Ewald,  v.  303. 


336  JUDAS  MACCABiEUS.  Lect.  XLVTIl 

"  ately  embittered.  It  was  at  this  crisis,  in  the  sultry 
"  heat  of  an  age  thus  frightfully  oppressive,  that  this 
"  book  appeared  with  its  sword-edge  utterance,  its 
"  piercing  exhortation  to  endure  in  face  of  the  despot, 
"  and  its  promise,  full  of  Divine  joy,  of  near  and  sure 
"  salvation.  No  dew  of  heaven  could  fall  with  more 
"  refreshing  coolness  on  the  parched  ground,  no  spark 
"  from  above  alight  with  a  more  kindling  power  on  the 
"  surface  so  long  heated  with  a  hidden  glow.  With 
"  winged  brevity  the  book  gives  a  complete  survey  of 
"  the  history  of  the  kingdom  of  God  upon  earth,  show- 
"  ing  the  relations  which  it  had  hitherto  sustained  in 
"  Israel  to  the  successive  great  heathen  empires  of  the 
"  Chaldaeans,  Meclo-Persians,  and  Greeks, —  in  a  word, 
"  towards  the  heathenism  which  ruled  the  world ;  and 
"  with  the  finest  perception  it  describes  the  nature 
"  and  individual  career  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  and  his 
"  immediate  predecessors  so  far  as  was  possible  in  view 
"  of  the  great  events  which  had  just  occurred.  Rarely 
"does  it  happen1  that  a  book  appears  as  this  did,  in 
"  the  very  crisis  of  the  times,  and  in  a  form  most 
"  suited  to  such  an  age,  artificially  reserved,  close  and 
"  severe,  and  yet  shedding  so  clear  a  light  through 
"  obscurity,  and  so  marvellously  captivating.  It  was 
''  natural  that  it  should  soon  achieve  a  success  entirely 
''  corresponding  to  its  inner  truth  and  glory.  And 
"  so,  for  the  last  time  in  the  literature  of  the  Old  Tes- 
u  tament,  we  have  in  this  book  an  example  of  a  work 
"  which,  having  sprung  from  the  deepest  necessities  of 
"  the  noblest  impulses  of  the  age,  can  render  to  that 
"  age  the  purest  service ;  and  which  by  the  dcvelop- 
'*  ment  of  events  immediately  after,  receives  with  such 
"  power  the  stamp  of  Divine  witness  that  it  subse- 
quently attains  imperishable  sanctity." 

i  Ewald,  v.  305. 


Lect.  XLVin.  THE   ASMONEAN  FAMILY.  337 

Whether  the  narrative  of  the  faithful  Israelites  in 
the  court  of  Nebuchadnezzar  and  of  Darius  had  been 
handed  down  from  the  Exile,  or  whether  they  were 
then  produced  for  the  first  time,  the  practical  result 
must  have  been  the  same.  As  the  seven  sons  are  the 
first  examples  of  the  heroic  testimony  of  martyrs' 
words,  so  the  narrative  of  the  Three  Children  in  the 
Fire  and  of  Daniel  in  the  Lions'  Den  is  the  first  glori- 
fication, the  first  canonization,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
martyr  spirit.  And  accordingly  at  this  time  we  first 
find  them  cited  as  encouragements  and  consolations.1 

"  At  this  stage  2  of  its  history,  when  Israel  rises  once 
"  more,  even  though  but  for  a  brief  period,  The  Asmon. 
"  to  the  pure  elevation  of  its  noblest  days,  it ean  family" 
"  was  fitting  that  the  first  beginning  of  a  serious  re- 
"  sistance  should  come  about  involuntarily,  as  it  were 
"  by  a  higher  necessity,  almost  without  the  co-opera- 
"  tion  of  human  self-will  and  human  passion  ;  still  less 
"  with  any  aid  of  human  calculation,  yet  by  the  force  ot 
"human  courage  and  skill  and  perseverance,  working 
"  as  if  without  any  Divine  interposition."  The  Psalter 
of  Solomon  had  expressed  its  hope  that  an  anointed 
or  priestly  hero 8  should  arise  to  save  the  people.  The 
expectation  of  Daniel  was  that,  after  the  monster 
forms  of  Empires,  tearing  and  rending  each  other  to 
pieces,  there  should  rise  a  Deliverer  in  human  form, 
"  A  Son  of  man," 4  with  all  the  gentle  and  noble 
qualities  of  man.  They  were  not  deceived.  Such  an 
one  was  at  hand. 

There  was  a  priestly  family  known  by  the  unusual 

1  1  Mace.  ii.  59,  60.     The  earliest         8  Psalms  of  Solomon  vi.  1,  2;  xvii, 
quotation  from  Daniel.  23,  24;  xviii.  8,  9. 

'  Ewald,  v.  306.  4  Dan.  vii.  14  (Heb.).    See  note  at 

end  of  Lecture. 
"2 


338  JUDAS   MACCABJEUS.  Lect.  XL VIII. 

name *  of  its  chief  of  four  generations  back,  Chasmon 
or  Asmon,  "  The  Magnate."  Its  present  head  was  ad 
vanced  in  years,  Mattathias,  with  five  sons  in  the 
prime  of  life.  At  the  beginning  of  the  persecution 
the  whole  family  retired  from  Jerusalem  to  their 
country  residence  in  the  town  of  Modin  or  Modem, 
on  the  slope  of  the  hills  which  descend  from  the 
passes  of  Judaea  into  the  plains  of  Philistia  or  Sharon. 
"  Who  can  encounter  the  sun  at  midsummer  ?  Every 
"  one  escapes  and  seeks  a  shelter.  So  every  one  fled 
"  from  the  Grecian  kingdom  and  its  armies.  Only  the 
"  Priest  Mattathias  and  his  sons  remained  faithful  to 
"  God,  aud  the  armies  of  Antiochus  were  dispersed 
"  before  them,  and  were  exterminated." 2  Such  is 
almost  the  sole  notice  in  the  later  Talmudic  literature 
of  this  return  of  the  heroic  age  of  Israel.  But  the 
vacancy  is  amply  filled  by  the  treble  account  which 
the  three  next  generations  supplied. 

The  war  of  independence  began,  as  often,  from 
a  special  incident.  At  Modin,  as  elsewhere  through 
Palestine,  an  altar  had  been  erected  on  which  the 
inhabitants  were  expected  to  join  in  the  Greek  sacri- 
fices. Mattathias,  who  had  himself  indignantly  re- 
fused to  take  part,  was  so  enraged  at  the  sight  of  the 
compliance  of  one  of  his  countrymen  that  "  his  reins 
"  trembled,  neither  could  he  forbear  to  show  his  anger 
"  according  to  judgment."  3  Both  sacrificer  and  royal 
officer  fell  victims  to  this  sudden  outburst  of  indigna- 
tion, which  the  historian  compares  to  that  of  the  an- 

1  It  only  occurs  in  Psalm   Ixviii.  Smith  or  Marshall  (Marechal),  and 

H2,  "fat"  —  with  lar^e  means  and  as  the  Cabiric  demigods  and  Scan- 

retinue.      Herzfeld,  ii.   264,  renders  dinavian  heroes  were  "blacksmiths." 

it  "a  tempcror  of  steel,"   so  as  to  2  Derenbourg,  57. 

he  the  equivalent  of  Maccabee,  and  8  Or  "breathing  fury  through  his 

both  then  wonld  be  like  the  English  "  nostrils,"  1  Mace.  ii.  25. 


Lect.  xlviii.  the  asmonean  family.  339 

cient  Phinehas.  The  die  was  cast.  It  was  like  the 
story  of  Wat  Tyler  in  Kent,  or  of  Tell  in  Switzerland 
or  of  the  Sicilian  Vespers.  Mattathias  raised  his  war- 
cry  of  "  Zeal,"  and  of  "  the  Covenant,"  and  dashed 
with  his  whole  family  into  the  adjacent  mountains. 
There  they  herded  like  wild  animals  in  the  limestone 
caverns,  protected  against  the  weather  by  the  rough 
clothing  of  the  Syrian  peasants,  taken  off  the  backs 
of  the  white  sheep  or  black  goats  on  which  they  fed ] 
together  with  such  roots  and  vegetables  as  they  could 
find,  so  as  to  avoid  the  chance  of  the  polluted  food  of 
the  heathen. 

Whenever  they  encountered  a  heathen  altar  they 
destroyed  it.  Whenever  they  found  a  neglected  child 
they  circumcised  it.  Their  spirit  rose  with  the  emer- 
gency. "  The  venerable  leader  felt  his  soul  lifted  by 
"  the  higher  need  above  the  minute  precepts  of  the 
"  Scribes,"  and  determined  to  break  the  Sabbatical  re- 
pose which  had  so  often  exposed  them  to  ruin.  "If  we 
"  shall  do  as  our  brethren  have  clone,  and  fight  not  for 
"  our  lives  and  laws  against  the  heathen,  they  will  now 
"  quickly  root  us  out  of  the  earth.  Whosoever  shall 
"come  to  make  battle  with  us  on  the  Sabbath  day,  we 
"  will  fight  again'st  him  ;  neither  will  we  die  all  as  our 
"brethren  that  were  murdered."2  For  a  moment 
even  the  rigid  party  of  "  the  Chasidim  "  threw  in  their 
lot  with  the  loftier  patriotism  of  Mattathias ;  and 
when  he  sank  under  the  weight  of  age  and  care,  in 
the  first  year  of  the  revolt,  the  whole  nation  joined  in 
interring  him  in  the  ancestral  tomb  at  Modin,  which 
henceforth  became  a  sacred  place,  to  which  child  after 

1  2  Mace.  v.  27;  vi.  11;  x.  6,  and  ence)  Heb,  xi.  37.  Comp.  Psalt.  Sol., 
{for  this   must  be   the   chief   refer-     xviii.  19. 

2  1  Mace.  ii.  41,  42. 


340  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XL VII I. 

child  of  that  renowned  family  was  borne.  "If  it  wa? 
"a  stroke  of  rare  fortune  that  the  insurrection  thus 
"  broke  out  undesignedly  and  was  set  on  foot  by  such 
"  a  blameless  character,  it  was  no  less  fortunate  that 
"  he  left  behind  him  a  heroic  band  of  five  sons,  who 
"  were  ready  to  carry  on  the  contest  without  an  in- 
'•'  stant's  delay.  Seldom  has  the  world  seen  an  in- 
"  stance  of  five  brothers  animated  by  the  same  spirit, 
"  and  without  mutual  jealousy  sacrificing  themselves 
"  for  the  same  cause,  of  whom  one  only  survived  an- 
"  other  in  order  to  carry  it  on,  if  possible  with  more 
"  zeal  and  success,  while  not  one  had  anything  in  view 
"  but  the  great  object  for  which  his  father  had  fallen."  * 
Each  of  the  five  sons  succeeded  in  turn  to  the  chief- 
tainship of  the  family,  and  each  had  a  separate  sur- 
name to  distinguish  him  from  the  many  who  bore  the 
like  names  amongst  the  Jewish  people.  The  eldest, 
John,  was  "  the  Holy  "  or  "  the  Lucky ;  "  the  second, 
"  Simon," 2  was  "  the  Burst  of  Spring,"  or  "  the 
"  Jewel ;  "  the  fourth,  Eleazar,3  was  "  the  Beaststicker," 
the  fifth,  Jonathan,  was  "  the  Cunning."  But  of  all 
these  surnames,  whether  given  in  their  lifetimes  or 
afterwards  from  their  exploits,  the  only  one  which  has 
survived  to  later  times  and  covered  the  whole  clan  with 
glory  is  that  of  the  third  brother,  Judas,  who,  like 
Charles  the  "  Martel "  of  the  Moors,  and  Edward  the 
"  Malleus  Scotorum,"  received  the  name  of  the  "  Ham- 
'  mer,"  Maccab  —  possibly  connected  with  the  name  of 

1  Ewald,  v.  308.  John.     On   their  wedding-day,  the 

2  Grimm,  ii.  2G6,  on    1  Mace.  ii.     seventeenth  of  the  month  Elul,  she 
1-5.  was  seized  by  a  Syrian  officer.     The 

8  One    tradition    represented    the  bridegroom   killed  him  on  tlie  spot 

origin    of   the    insurrection  to   have  (Raphall,  i.  241).     May  it  not  have 

been  an  outrage  on  Eleazar's  wife,  been   from   this   that   Eleazar's   sur- 

Hannah,   the  beautiful   daughter  of  name  was  first  derived? 


Lect.  xlviii.  his  victories.  341 

the  ancestor  of  the  family  Asmon  —  possibly  also  com 
memoratecl  in  the  original  Hebrew1  name  of  the  book 
which  described  his  fame  —  "  The  Avenging  Rod  of  the 
Prince  of  the  Sons  of  God." 

He  it  was  whom  Mattathias  in  his  last  moments 
recommended  as  the  military  leader  —  "  as  Judas 
"  mighty  and  strong  from  his  youth  up.  Let  Maccabfeus- 
"him  be  your  captain,  and  fight  the  battle  of  the 
"people."  At  once  he  took  the  vacant  place.  At  once 
he  became  the  Jewish  ideal  of  "  the  Happy  Warrior." 
There  was  "  a  cheerfulness  "  diffused  through  the  whole 
army  when  he  appeared.  His  countrymen  delighted 
to  remember  the  stately  appearance,  as  of  an  ancient 
giant,  when  he  fastened  on  his  breast-plate,  or  tight- 
ened his  military  sash  around  him,  or  waved  his  pro- 
tecting sword  —  a  sword  itself  renowned,  as  we  shall 
see,  both  in  history  and  legend  —  over  the  camp  of  his 
faithful  followers.  They  listened  with  delight  for  the 
loud  cheer,  the  roar  as  of  a  young  lion  —  the  race  not 
yet  extinct  in  the  Jordan  valley2  —  with  which  he 
snuffed  out  the  Israelite  renegades,  chasing  them  into 
their  recesses,  and  smoking  or  burning  them  out.  They 
exulted  in  his  victory  over  the  three,  "the  many" 
kings.  But  the  lasting  honor  which  they  pathetically 
revered  as  the  climax  of  all  was  that  with  a  true  chiv- 
alry "  he  received  such  as  were  ready  to  perish." 3 

Three  decisive  victories  in  the  first  two  years  of  the 
campaign   secured  his  fame   and  his    success.  »-c.  166. 
The  first  was  against  the  Syrian  general  Apol-  Samaria. 
lonius,   apparently  near  Samaria.     The   trophy  which 

1  "  Sarbath  sar  Bene  El;"  Origen        2  1  Mace.  iii.  4. 
in  Ens.,  H.E.,  vi.  25.   This  seems  the         8  1  Mace.  iii.  9. 
nost  probable  explanation.     Ewald, 
7.  463. 


342  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVIIL 

Judas  retained  of  the  battle  was  the  sword  of  the  dis- 
tinguished general,  which  he  carried,  as  David  did  that 
of  the  Philistine  giant,  to  the  end  of  his  life.1  And  the 
second  was  in  the  mountains  near  his  native  place,  and 
on  the  spot  already  ennobled  by  the  overthrow  of  the 
Battle  of  Canaanite  kings  by  Joshua,  in  the  Pass  of  Beth- 
Beth-horor..  horon  The  third  and  most  decisive  struggle 
brings  before  us  in  a  lively  form  the  various  elements 
of  the  war.  The  King  was  absent  on  an  expedition 
into  Persia,  but  no  less  than  three  generals,  Ptolemy, 
Nicanor,  and  Gorgias,  are  mentioned  by  name  under 
Lysias,  the  Governor  of  the  whole  Syrian  province,  and 
the  young  Antiochus,  the  heir  of  the  throne.  Their 
The  head-quarters   were    at    Emmaus,    "  the    hot 

Emmaus.  "  baths  "  in  the  Philistine  plain  ;  and  the  inter- 
est of  the  merchants  in  the  seaport  towns  of  Philistia 
was  engaged  by  the  hope  of  the  sale  of  the  Israelite  in- 
surgents for  slaves.  In  this  crisis  Judas  led  his  scanty 
host  over  the  mountains  to  the  ridge  of  Mizpeh,  the 
spot  where  Alexander  had  met  Jaclclua,  where,  after 
the  Chalclaean  capture  of  Jerusalem,  the  pilgrims  had 
come  to  wail  over  the  holy  city.  It  was  a  mournful 
scene.  They  could  see  from  that  high,  rocky  platform 
the  deserted  streets,  the  walls  and  gates  closed  as  if  of 
a  besieged  town,  the  silent2  precincts  of  the  Temple, 
the  Greek  garrison  in  the  fortress.  Before  that  distant 
presence  of  the  holy  place,  to  which  they  could  gain  no 
nearer  access,  the  mourners  came  wrapt  in  tatters  of 
black  hair-cloth,  with  ashes  on  their  heads.  They 
spread  out  the  copies  of  the  Law,  on  which  the  Greeks 
had  painted  in  mockery  the  pictures  of  heathen  deities. 
They  waved  the  sacerdotal  vestments^  for  which  there 
was  now  no  use.     They  showed  the  animals  and  the 

1  1  Mace.  iii.  12.  2  1  Mace.  iii.  45. 


Lect.  xlvhi.  his  victories.  343 

vegetables  due  for  first  fruits  and  tithes.  They  passed 
in  long  procession  the  Nazarites1  with  their  flowing 
tresses,  who  were  unable  to  dedicate  themselves  in  the 
sanctuary.  And  at  the  close  of  this  sorrowful  ceremony 
there  was  a  blast  of  trumpets,  and  the  army  was  sifted 
of  its  timid  or  pre-engaged  members.  To  the  gallant 
remainder  Judas  addressed  his  stirring  harangue.  He 
reminded  them  of  their  ancient  and  their  recent  deliv- 
erances—  in  ancient  days  of  the  overthrow  of  Sen- 
nacherib, amongst  those  same  hills  and  vales  in  recent 
days  of  the  battle  in  which  the  comparative  prowess 
of  the  Israelite  and  the  Macedonian  troops  was  tested 
by  an  encounter  with  the  Celtic  invaders  of  Asia,  in 
which  the  Jews  turned  the  fortunes  of  the  day  when 
the  Greeks  fled.  The  army  was  placed  in  four  parts 
under  himself  and  his  three  brothers  Simon,  John, 
and  Jonathan,  whilst  the  fifth,  Eleazar,  was  commis- 
sioned to  recite  "the  Holy  Book"  and  to  proclaim2 
his  own  name  as  the  watchword  —  Eleazar,  "  the  help 
"of  God." 

After  these  preparations,  Judas  descended  from  the 
hills  by  night,  and,  leaving  his  empty  camp  as  a  prey 
to  Gorgias,  the  commander  of  the  garrison  at  Jerusa- 
lem, suddenly  attacked  the  forces  of  Nicanor  at  Em- 
mans.  Once  more  was  heard  the  well-known  trumpet- 
blast  of  the  Israelite  host,  and  a  complete  rout  followed. 
Nothing  could  stand  the  enthusiastic  ardor  of  the  in- 
surgents, slightly  armed  as  they  were.  It  was  a  Friday 
afternoon,  and  Judas  gave  the  command  to  halt  from 
pursuing  the  flying  enemy.  From  the  ridge  of  the 
mountain  which  overlooked  the  plain,  the  Grecian 
irmy 3  saw  the  columns  of  smoke  rising  from  the  plains, 
which  announced   that  their  countrymen's   camp  had 

1  1  Mace.  iii.  46-40.  2  2  Mace.  viii.  23.  8  1  Mace.  iv.  20. 


344  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVIIL 

been  stormed.  The  Sabbath,  on  whose  eve  the  battle 
closed,  had  now  set  in ;  and  as  the  gorgeous  spoils  of 
gold,  and  silver,  and  blue  silk,  and  Tyrian  purple  were 
spread  out,  they  sang  the  hundred  and  thirty-sixth 
Psalm  —  the  national  anthem,  it  may  be  called,  of  the 
Jewish1  race,  which  enumerates  the  examples  of  the 
never-ending  goodness  of  God.  It  would  hardly  have 
been  in  keeping  with  the  national  character  if  this 
day  had  passed  without  some  terrible  vengeance.  One 
of  the  subordinate  officers2  was  caught  and  slain.  Cal- 
listhenes,  who  had  set  fire3  to  the  gateways  of  the 
Temple,  they  forced  into  a  village  hut  and  there 
burned  him  alive. 

Yet  another  victory  was  needed  to  secure  their  en- 
b.  c.  165.     trance    into  Jerusalem.      It   was  won   in   the 

ISattle  of  . 

Beth-zur.  course  oi  the  next  year  over  Lysias  himseli,  m 
the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  capital,  at  Beth-zur  — 
"  the  House  of  the  Rock  "  —  a  fort  which  commanded 
the  Idumeean  border,  possibly  represented  by  the  lone 
tower  which  now  overhangs  the  stony  passes  on  the 
way  to  Hebron.  From  that  moment  they  were  masters 
TheDedi-  of  Jerusalem.  The  desolation,  which  before 
could  only  be  seen  from  the  height  of  Mizpeh, 
they  now  were  able  to  approach  without  impediment. 
The  Greek  garrison  was  still  in  the  fortress,  but  the 
Temple  was  left  open.  They  entered,  and  found  the 
scene  of  havoc  which  the  Syrian  occupation  had  left. 
The  corridors  of  the  Priests'  chambers  which  encircled 
the  Temple  were  torn  down  ;  the  gates  were  in  ashes, 
the  altar  was  disfigured,  and   the  whole  platform  was 

1  Compare    1    Chron.   xvi.   41;    2         2  (pvAapxys,     "an    officer    of    the 

•Chron.  xx.  21 ;  Jer.  xxxiii.  11;  Song  tribes,"    not    (as    in    A.    V  )    Phi 

of  the  Three  Children,  67;  Psalms  larches.     2  Mace  viii.  32. 
tvi.  1;  cvii.  1;  cxviii.  1.  3  2  Mace.  viii.   33. 


Lect.  xlviii.  the  dedication.  345 

overgrown  as  if  with  a  mountain  jungle  or  forest 
glade.1  It  was  a  heart-rending  spectacle.  Their  first 
impulse  was  to  cast  themselves  headlong  on  the  pave- 
ment, and  blow  the  loud  horns  which  accompanied  all 
mournful  as  well  as  all  joyous  occasions  —  the  tocsin  as 
well  as  the  chimes  of  the  nation.  Then,  whilst  the  for- 
eign garrison  was  kept  at  bay,  the  warriors  first  began 
the  elaborate  process  of  cleansing  the  polluted  place. 
Out  of  the  sacerdotal  tribe  those  were  chosen  who  had 
not  been  compromised  with  the  Greeks.  The  first  ob- 
ject was  to  clear  away  every  particle  which  had  been 
touched  by  the  unclean  animals.  On  the  22d  of 
Marchesvan  they  removed  the  portable  altar  which 
had  been  erected.  On  the  3d  of  Chisleu  they  re- 
moved the  smaller  altars  from  the  court  in  front  of 
the  Temple,  and  the  various  Pagan  statues.2  With  the 
utmost  care  they  pulled  down,  as  it  would  seem,  the 
great  platform  of  the  altar  itself,  from  the  dread  lest 
its  stones  should  have  been  polluted.  But,  with  the 
scrupulosity  which  marked  the  period,  they  considered 
that  stones  once  consecrated  could  never  be  entirely 
desecrated,  and  accordingly  hid  them  away  in  a  corner 
of  the  Temple  (it  was  believed  in  one  of  the  four 
closets  of  the  fireroom  of  the  Priest 3  at  the  northwest 
corner  of  the  Temple,  there  to  remain  till 4  the  Prophet 
—  it  may  be  Elijah  —  the  solver  of  riddles,  should 
come  and  tell  what  was  to  be  done  with  them).  How 
many  stones  of  spiritual  or  intellectual  edifices  excite 
a  like  perplexed  fear  lest  they  have  been  so  misused 
that  they  cannot  be  employed  again  —  at  least  till  some 
prophet  comes  to  tell  us  how  and  when !     For  the  in- 

i  i  Mace.  iv.   38.  8  Middoth,  Mishna,  iv.  46. 

2  2  Mace.  x.  2,  3.    Sigura  =  grate.         4  1  Mace.  iv.  46. 
Simoth  =  o-17/xsto.     Derenbourg,  62. 
44 


346  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lkct.  XLVin. 

terior  of  the  Temple  everything  had  to  be  refurnished 
afresh,  —  vessels,  and  candlesticks,  and  incense  altar, 
and  tables,  and  curtains.  At  last  all  was  completed, 
and  on  the  25th  of  Chisleu,  the  same  day  that  three 
years  before  the  profanation  had  occurred,  the  Temple 
was  re-dedicated.  It  was  the  very  *  time,  either  pre- 
dicted or  commemorated  in  the  Book  of  Daniel.  The 
three  years  and  a  half  from  the  time  of  the  first  be- 
ginning of  the  sacrilege  was  over,  and  the  rebound  of 
the  national  sentiment  was  in  proportion.  "  It  was 
"  the  feast  of  the  dedication  and  it  was  winter,"  but 
the  depth  of  the  winter  could  not  restrain  the  burst  of 
joj^.  From  the  first  dawn  of  that  day  for  the  whole 
following  week  there  were  songs  of  joy  sung  with  cym- 
bals and  harps.  In  the  Psalms  ascribed  to  Solomon 
there  are  exulting  strains  which  echo  the  words  of  the 
Evangelical  Prophet  and  welcome  the  return  into  Jeru- 
salem.2 The  smoke  once  more  went  up  from  the  altar ; 
the  gates  and  even  the  priestly  chambers  were  fumi- 
gated. The  building  itself  was  studded  with  golden 
crowns  and  shields,  in  imitation  of  the  golden  shields 
which  in  the  first  Temple  had3  adorned  the  porch. 
What  most  lived  in  the  recollection  of  the  time  was 
that  the  perpetual  light  blazed  again.  The  golden 
candlestick  was  no  longer  to  be  had.  Its  place  was 
taken  by  an  iron  chandelier  cased  in  wood.  But  this 
sufficed.4     It  was  a  solemn  moment  when  the  sacred 

1  Dan.  vii.  25;  ix.  24-27;  xii.  6,  7,  hero  like  Maccabeus,  tended  to  ful- 

Josephus,  B.  X,  i.  1,  1;  Ewald,  (v.  till  itself. 

805)  and  Herzfeld  (ii.  416)  suppose         2  Psalms  of  Solomon,  xi.  2,  3,  7. 
*he  Book  of  Daniel  to  have  appeared         8  Shields  (probably  in  imitation  of 

in  b.  c.  1G7,  thus  about  three  years  the  Temple)  were  hung  up  in  the 

before  the  coincidence  of  the  time  Alexandrian  synagogues    (PhL'o  ad 

had  been  realized.     It  was  no  doubt  Caium,  994). 
i  prediction  which,  in  the  hands  of  a         *  Derenbourg,  54. 


Lect.  xlviii.  the  dedication  347 

fire  was  once  again  kindled  on  the  new  altar,  and  from 
it  the  flame  communicated  to  the  rest  of  the  building. 
As  in  the  modern  ceremony  of  the  "  Sacred  Fire  "  in 
the  church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  so  this  incident  was 
wrapt  in  mystery  *  and  legend.  The  simple  historical 
account  is  that  they  procured  the  light  by  striking  the 
fresh  unpolluted  stones  against  each  other.  But  later 
representations,  going  back  to  the  like  events  of  Nehe- 
miah's  life,  imagined  some  preternatural  origin  of  the 
fire  itself.  It  was  further  supposed  that  one  unpolluted 
cruse  was  found  which  furnished  the  oil  for  the  lighting 
of  the  Temple  during  the  whole  week  of  the  festival ; 
in  remembrance  of  which  every  private  house  was  il- 
luminated, beginning,  according  to  one  usage,  with 
eight  candles,  and  decreasing  as  the  week  went  on  ; 
according  to  the  other  usage,  beginning  with  one  and 
advancing  to  eight.  Partly,  no  doubt,  from  these  tra- 
ditions or  (as  Josephus  thinks)  from  the  returning  joy 
of  the  whole  nation,  the  festival  in  after  days  bore  the 
name  of  the  "  Feast  of  Lights."  This  would  receive  a 
yet  fuller  significance  in  connection  with  another  as- 
pect of  this  great  clay.  Though  latest  of  all  the  Jewish 
festivals,  it  took  rank  at  once  with  the  earlier  holy 
days.  It  won  for  itself  a  sanctity  which  neither  the 
dedication  of  Solomon  nor  of  Zerubbabel2  had  ac- 
quired. Both  of  these  consecrations  had  been  ar- 
ranged to  coincide  with  the  great  autumnal  Feast  of 
the  Tabernacles,  the  most  festive  of  the  Jewish  solem- 
nities. That  season  had  already  passed  whilst  the 
patriots  were  hiding  in  the  mountains ;  and,  therefore, 
if  celebrated  at  all,  had  been  shorn  of  its  general 
gaiety,  or  defiled  by  an  attempted  combination  with  the 
Bacchanalian3  festival,  to  which   its  peculiarities  lent 

1  Derenbourg,  62.  8  Plutarch  (Qucest,  Conv.  v.  6,  2) 

2  Edersheirn,  The  Temple,  294.  dwells  on  the  thyrsi,  the  gilt  kidskin 


348  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVIIL 

themselves.  Now,  however,  it  was  determined  to  make 
this  new  solemnity  a  repetition,  as  it  were,  of  the  Feast 
of  Tabernacles.1  It  was  called  in  after  days  "  The 
"  Tabernacle  Feast  of  the  Winter ;  "  and  on  this,  its 
first  occasion,  there  were  blended  with  it  the  usual  pro- 
cessions of  that  gay  autumnal  holiday,  brandishing 
their  woven  branches  —  of  the  palm,2  and  other  trees 
whose  evergreen  foliage  cheered  the  dull  aspect  of  a 
Syrian  December.  And  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  they 
would,  in  accordance  with  the  name  of  the  "  Feast  of 
"  Lights,"  add  to  its  celebration  that  further  charac- 
teristic of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  —  the  illumination 
of  the  whole  precincts  of  the  Temple  by  two  great 
chandeliers  placed  in  the  court,  by  the  light  of  which 
festive  dances  were  kept  up  all  through  the  night.3 

There  was  an  additional  propriety  in  the  transference 
of  the  natural  festival  of  the  vintage  to  this  new  feast, 
because  it  coincided  with  the  natural  solemnity  of  wel- 
coming the  first  light  kindled  in  the  new  year.  The 
25th  of  December  was  at  Tyre,  as  at  Rome  in  after 
times,  celebrated  as  the  birthday  of  the  Sun,  the  Her- 
cules, the  Melcarth  of  the  Phoenician  theology,  dying 
on  his  funeral  pyre,  and  reviving,  phoenix-like,  from 
his  own  ashes.4  It  was  the  revival  —  the  renewal  — 
the  Encomia  of  man  and  of  nature. 

The  Temple  was  the  kernel  of  Judaea,  and  having 
won  that,  the  Maccabams  might  be  said  to  have  won 
everything.  Still  it  was  surrounded  by  a  circle  of 
enemies.  Close  at  hand  was  the  fortress  occupied  by 
the  Syrian  garrison.     Against  this  Judas  took  the  pre- 

of  the  high  priest,  the  bells  and  the  8  See  Wctstein  on  John  viii.  12. 

trumpets,  as  signs  of  identity.    Com-  4  Raoul    Rochette    (Mc'moires    de 

Dare  Tac.  Hist.,  v.  VAcademie,    xvii.    Part    II.   p.    25); 

1  2  Mace.  vi.  7.  Ewald,  v.   312. 

9  2  Mace.  x.  5. 


Lect.  XLVIII. 


HIS   CAMPAIGNS.  349 


caution 1  —  apparently  for  the  first  time  in  Jewish  his- 
tory  —  of  surrounding  the  whole  of  the  Temple  mount 
with  high  walls  and  strong  towers,  which  remained  as  a 
permanent  feature  of  the  place.  The  two  hostile  par- 
ties stood  entrenched  in  their  respective  positions,  with- 
out mutual  interference,  like  the  rival  factions  in  Jeru- 
salem during  the  siege  of  Titus,  or  in  Paris  during  its 
great  insurrections. 

But  on  the  further  circumference  there  were  three 
distinct  sources  of  Alarm.  On  the  south  was  B  c  164 
Edom,  whose  territory  now  reached  within  a  a|Sgn 
few  miles  of  Jerusalem.  On  the  east  were  the  Edom' 
malignant  tribes  of  Ammon  and  Moab.  And  on  the 
north  and  west  was  that  fringe  of  Grecian  colonies 
which  had  been  established,  chiefly  in  the  ancient  Ca- 
ll a anite  or  Philistine  cities,  by  the  Ptolomaean  or  Syrian 
kings.  The  year  following  on  the  dedication  of  the 
Temple  was  entirely  occupied  with  repelling  the  intru- 
sion of  these  hereditary  enemies.  The  first  effort  of 
Judas  was  in  the  south  against  the  old  hereditary  foe, 
the  race  of  Esau.  On  the  frontier  of  that  territory  was 
the  craggy  fortress  commanding  the  pass,  and  from  its 
situation  called  the  House  of  the  Rock  (Beth-zur),  al- 
ready contested  in  the  battle  with  Lysias.  This  was  oc- 
cupied by  Judas  as  an  outpost  against  Edom,  and  from 
this  he  attacked  the  whole  of  the  hostile  race.  Now,  if 
ever,  began  to  be  fulfilled  the  hope  expressed  in  the 
bitterness  of  the  Babylonian  Exile,  that  a  conqueror 
should  return  from  those  hated  fastnesses,  wading 
knee-deep  in  the  blood2  of  Edom,  and  with  his  gar- 
ments stained  as  if  from  the  red  winepress  of  the  battle- 
fields of  Bozra.  From  their  entrenchments  at  the  head 
or  foot  of  the  Pass  of  Akrabbim  he  .swept  eastward  and 

1  1  Mace.  iv.  60.  2  Isa.  lxiii.  1-6. 


350  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVIIl 

drove  a  tribe,  terrible  then,  unnamed  before  or  since, 
''the  children  of  Bean,"  into  their  "towers"  or  "peels," 
which,  in  the  savage  spirit  of  Jewish  retaliation,  he 
burned  with  all  their  occupants ;  and  thus,  still  press- 
ing onwards,  in  skirmish  after  skirmish  routed  the  Am- 
monites,  under  their  Greek  commander  Timotheus,  and 
returned  in  triumph.  But  the  campaign  was  only  half 
completed.  The  widespread  magic  of  the  name  Judas 
is  wonderfully  attested  by  the  entreaties  for  succor 
which  pursued  him  into  his x  brief  repose  at  Jerusalem. 
One  came  from  the  Transjordamc  district  which  he  had 
just  left,  announcing  that  Timotheus  had  rallied  his 
forces,  and  driven  the  Israelites  of  the  district  into  the 
fortress  of  Dathema,  of  site  now  unknown;  another, 
Beyond  borne  by  messengers  with  their  clothes  torn  in 
Jordan.  expression  of  the  extremity  of  their  distress,  to 
announce  that  the  Grecian  settlers  in  the  north  and 
west  had  risen  against  the  inhabitants  of  Galilee.  In- 
stantly Judas  made  his  arrangements.  To  the  north  he 
sent  his  eldest  brother  Simon,  whose  exploits  are  briefly 
told,  but  who  succeeded  in2  driving  back  the  Grecian 
armies  across  the  plain  of  Esdraelon  to  the  very  gates 
of  Ptolemais.  He  himself  took  the  ground  already  fa- 
miliar to  him  in  the  Transjordanic  forests,  reserving  for 
his  assistance  his  brother  "  Jonathan  the  Cunning." 
As  travellers  now,  so  then,  he  gained  the  alliance  of  a 
friendly  Arabian  tribe.  Throughout  the  district  the  in- 
habitants had  shut  themselves  up  for  refuge  in  the 
numerous  towns  which  of  old  had  been  renowned  for 
the  high  walls  which  acted  as  defences  against  the  Be- 


1  1  Mace.  v.  3.     The  same  cam-  2  1  Mace.  v.  23.     Arbattis  —  i.  e., 

paign    is   told,    though   in    different  the  upper  part  of  the  Araboth  or  Ar- 

order  and   with  different  details,  in  both,  or  valley  of  the  Jordan.     Sec 

2  Maec.  xii.  1-45.  Sinai  and  Palestine,  Appendix,  §  10. 


Lect.  xlviii.  his  campaigns.  351 

douins  of  the  adjacent  desert.  The  Greek  leader  had 
laid  his  plans  for  a  simultaneous  attack  on  all  those  for- 
tresses on  the  same  day.  But  at  the  very  moment 
when  at  early  dawn  the  scaling-ladders  were  planted, 
and  the  battering-rams  prepared  against  one  of  the  most 
important,  there  broke  through  the  stillness  of  the 
morning  the  well-known  trumpet-blast  which  the  Gre- 
cian general  recognized  as  the  signal  that  the  Hammer 
of  the  Gentiles  was  at  hand,  and  the  siege  was  raised, 
and  the  besiegers  fled.  Another  fight  followed  on  the 
banks  of  one  of  the  mountain  torrents  that  descend 
from  the  hills  of  Gilead  to  the  Jordan.  Judas  dashed 
across  the  stream  whilst  his  adversaries  wavered,  and 
down  the  way  before  him  to  the  great  sanctuary  of 
Atargatis  with  the  Two  Horns,1  and  there  destroyed 
them.  This  was  the  crowning  act  of  his  series  of  vic- 
tories, gained,  as  we  are  assured,  without  the  loss  of  a 
single  Israelite,  and  the  victor  returned  laden  with  spoil, 
and  followed  by  vast  masses  of  the  Transjordanic  pop- 
ulation. On  his  way,  in  the  pride  of  conquest,  he  de- 
stroyed the  tower  of  Ephron,  which  refused  them  ad- 
mittance. He  crossed  the  Jordan,  at  the  ford  by  which 
Gideon  had  returned  from  a  like  victorious  expedition, 
to  celebrate 2  the  Feast  of  Pentecost  in  triumph  at  Je- 
rusalem. And,  now  that  all  was  thus  secured,  he  com- 
pleted his  successes  by  one  more  sally  into  Edom, 
reducing  the  ancient  Hebron,3  since  the  Exile  con- 
verted into  an  Idumrean  fortress,  and  destroying  the 
last  stronghold  of  the  old  Philistine  worship  at  Ashdod. 
In  this  climax  of  the  resistance  of  Israel  there  came 

1  Atargatis  Carnion,  1  Mace.  v.  44 ;         9  2  Mace.  xii.  32. 
2  Mace    xii.   26 ;  possibly  the  same         8  1  Mace.  v.  65. 
Carnaim  as  Aste^ith  Carnaim,  Gen. 
xiv.  5. 


352  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVIIL 

the  tidings  that  King  Antiochus  was  suddenly  dead. 
Death  of  Alike  in  Greek  and  Jewish  records  fable  gath- 
HJJjjSSjj^  erea"  round  the  end  of  this  splendid  but  way- 
b.c.  164.  war(J  prince.  Even  to  his  own  co-religionists 
there  was  a  strange  significance  in  his  sudden  disap- 
pearance. It  seemed  to  them  as  if  it  was  a  judgment 
for  his  reckless  attack  on  the  Temple1  of  Nanea,  or  the 
Moon-Goddess,  in  Persia ;  and  even  one  of  the  Jewish 2 
accounts  represented  him  as  having  perished  in  his  as- 
sault on  the  shrine.  But  the  Hebrew  historians  not 
unnaturally  connected  the  unexpected  close  of  their 
persecutor's  career  with  his  mortification  at  the  re- 
ception of  the  tidings  of  their  hero's  victories ;  and  it 
agrees  with  their  occasional  recognition  of  some  sparks 
of  generous  feeling  in  his  capricious  courses  that  they 
give  him  the  credit  of  a  death-bed  repentance  for  his 
misdeeds  —  in  the  latest  account  even  a  complete  re- 
vocation of  his  tyrannical  edicts.3  It  was,  no  doubt,  the 
crisis  of  the  contest.  Whether  the  mysterious  coun- 
sellor who,  under  the  name  of  the  Babylonian  seer,  had 
sketched  in  such  minute  detail  the  fortunes  of  the 
struggle    till   the  moment   of  the    desecration   of  the 

GO 

Temple,  saw  or  foresaw  the  death  of  the  persecutor  is 
doubtful.  There  are  in  the  Book  of  Daniel  dim  antici- 
pations of  his  end ;  but  none  of  the  frightful  details 
witli  which  the  historians  of  the  next  generation4 
abound. 

From  this  moment  the  struggle,  although  it  still  con- 
tinued, becomes  more  complicated,  and  its  fluctuating 
results  more  difficult  to  follow,  the  more  so  as  the  ulti- 

1  Polyb.  xxxi.  11.  4  Dan.  xi.  45.     Possibly  Dan.  vii. 

2  2  Mace.  1.  16.  11    may  refer  to    the    diseases    by 

3  1  Mace.  vi.   1-16;  2  Mace.  ix.     which  Antiochus  was  consumed. 
1-28. 


Lkct.  XLVIH.  HIS   CAMPAIGNS.  353 

mate  success  of  the  insurgents  was  now  assured.  On 
both  sides  there  was  the  entanglement  of  a  civil  war 
Alcimus,1  Eliakim,  or  Jehoiakim,  with  a  large  body  of 
adherents,  maintained  his  position  in  Jerusalem  as  High 
Priest,  by  the  influence  of  the  Syrian  court  against  the 
Maccabaean  warrior ;  and  Antiochus,  the  young  prince, 
with  Lysias  as  his  guardian,  had  to  fight  for  his  crown 
against  his  uncle  Demetrius.  But,  leaving  the  details 
which  obscure  the  main  thread  of  events,  we  may  fix 
our  attention  on  the  conflict  which  raged  in  the  closest 
quarters  between  the  two  rival  fortresses  in  Jerusalem 
itself.  The  Temple  mount  was  occupied  by  the  insur- 
gents;  the  ancient  citadel  of  David  was  occupied  by 
the  Greeks.  To  secure  this  position  a  vast  army  was 
sent  by  Lysias  down  the  Jordan  valley,  which  then  be- 
sieged the  Judsean  outpost,  already  taken  and  Second 
retaken,  of  Beth-zur.  It  was  here  that  a  battle  Beth-zur. 
took  place  of  which  the  unprecedented  circumstances 
left  a  deep  impression  on  the  Jewish  mind.  It  was  one 
of  the  peculiarities  of  Alexander's  remote  conquests 
that,  during  this  century,  for  the  first  and  last  time  in 
Western  history,  the  Indian  and  African  elephants  were 
brought  into  play  in  military  achievements.  The  Sy- 
rian and  Alexandrian  kings  specially  prided  themselves 
on  their  display  of  these  vast  creatures.  One  of  them 
had  been  known  as  "the  elephant-master"2  on  account 
of  this  passion,  and  had  given  five  hundred  as  a  wed 
ding-present  to  his  daughter.  On  this  occasion  the 
elephants  were  distributed  among  the  army  ranged,  in 
Macedonian  fashion,  in  phalanxes  or  columns.  Each 
animal  rose  like  a  mountain  from  its  own  troop  of 
1,000  infantry  and  500  cavalry,  of  which  it  was  the 

1  See  Lecture  XLIX.  2  Revue  des   Deux  Mondes,  1874. 

iv.  483. 
45 


354  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XL VIII 

centre.  The  creatures  were  roused  to  fury  by  show- 
ing them  the  red  juice  of  grapes  and  mulberries.  Their 
advance  was  magnificent.  The  attendant  soldiers  were 
dressed  in  chain  armor,  their  helmets  were  of  bright 
brass,  their  shields  of  brass  or  of  gold.  Huge  wooden 
towers  rose  on  the  backs  of  the  elephants,  fastened  on 
by  vast  trappings.  The  black  Indian  driver  was  con- 
spicuous on  the  neck  of  each  animal,  with  a  group  of 
two  or  three  soldiers  round  him,  which  the  Israelites 
magnified  into  a  whole  troop.1  Those  who  have  seen 
the  effect  even  of  an  ordinary  military  escort  defiling 
through  the  gray  hills  and  tufted  valleys  of  Judaea  can 
imagine  the  effect  of  this  vast  array  of  splendor.  When 
"  the  sun  shone  on  the  shields  and  helmets  of  gold  and 
"  brass,"  the  whole  range  of  the  rocky  ridges  and  of  the 
winding  glens  "  glistened  therewith  around,  and  shined 
"  like  blazing  torches."  The  noise  of  the  multitude, 
the  tramp  of  the  huge  beasts,  the  very  rattling  of  the 
armor  and  caparisons  was  portentous.  Fantastic  tradi- 
tions of  this  fight  lingered  in  various  forms  —  a  heav- 
enly champion  in  white  and  gold  —  a  charge  like  the 
spring  of  lions  against  walls  of  steel — the  watchword, 
"  Victory  is  of  God." 2  But  the  sober  fact  was  for  once 
the  small  band  of  Judas's  indomitable  infantry  failed 
in  the  face  of  such  tremendous  odds  —  not,  however, 
before  the  achievement  of  one  memorable  deed.  Elea- 
zar,  the  fourth  of  the  illustrious  brothers,  singling  out 
an  elephant  which,  from  its  towering  howdah,  he  imag- 
ined to  bear  the  young  Prince,  determined  to  sacrifice 
his  life.     He  found  his  way  through  the  hostile  ranks, 

1  Thirty-two  is  the  impossible  num-  "two,"  or  else  a  curious  instance  of 

ber  in  the  text  of  1  Mace.  vi.  37.    Pos-  the  enormous  exaggerations  of  the 

sibly  it  is  ;i  confusion  with  the  thirty-  Jewish  enumeration, 

two   elephants,    or  with    "three  or  2  2  Mace.  xi.  8,  11;  xiii.  15. 


Lect.  XLVin.  NICANOR.  355 

crept  under  the  elephant,  and  by  one  thrust  brought 
down  the  enormous  beast  upon  him — perishing,  but 
winning  by  his  daring  act  the  perpetual  name  which  he 
desired.  He  was  known  to  the  next  generation  as 
Avaran,  "  the  Beaststicker."  l 

The  next  decisive  move  was  the  victory  over  Nica- 
nor,  who  was  chosen  to  make  an  attack  on  Je-  B  c  162 
rusalem,    from   the  fanatical    hatred   he    bore Nicanor- 
against  the    insurgents  and  whose  name    accordingly 
long  survived  the  memory  of  Lysias,  Bacchides,  Timo- 
theus,  and  the  rest,  who  come  and  pass  like  shadows. 

He  had  already  taken  part  in  the  conflict  at  the  time 
of  the  battle  of  Emmaus,  and  a  peculiar  pathos  is 
given  to  his  history  by  the  circumstance  that  of  him 
alone  amongst  all  their  opponents  at  this  period,  there 
remained  a  tradition  —  difficult,  perhaps,  to  reconcile 
with  the  hard  language  in  which  he  is  generally  de- 
scribed, but  quite  consistent  with  human  character  — 
that,  whatever  might  be  his  animosity  against  the 
Jewish  nation,  he  had  perhaps  from  admiration  of  the 
earlier  prowess  displayed  in  their  first  encounter,  con- 
ceived a  strong  personal  admiration  and  affection  for 
Judas  MaccabaBus.  The  momentary  consternation  by 
which  his  sudden  appearance  checked  the  insurgents 
under  Simon  gave  him  the  opportunity  of  opening 
friendly  communications  with  Judas  himself.  Hismeeting 
There  was  a  natural  suspicion.  .  But  Judas with  Judas- 
came  to  Jerusalem,  and  for  the  first  time  the  two  foes 
came  face  to  face.  It  was  the  meeting  of  Claverhouse 
and  Morton. 

They  sat  side  by  side  on  chairs  of2  state,  like  the 
curule  seats  of  the  Roman  magistrates.  The  Syrian 
general  was  completely  fascinated.     He  could  not  beai 

1  1  Mace.  vi.  43-46;  ii.  5.  2  2  Mace.  xiv.  21 


356  JTJDAS   MACCAB.EUS.  Lect    XXVIII. 

to  have  Judas  out  of  his  sight — "  he  loved  the  man 
"  from  his  heart."  He  entered  into  his  future  plans. 
He  entreated  him  to  hiry  aside  this  wandering  course,  to 
have  a  wife  and  children  of  his  own.  He  held  out  the 
picture  of  marriage,  and  a  quiet  and  settled  home. 
The  High  Priest's  office  was  apparently  suggested  as 
the  haven  of  the  warrior's  stormy  career.  If  we  may 
trust  the  brief  sentence  1  which  follows,  Judas  accepted 
the  advice  so  cordially  that  the  long-delayed  event 
took  place  —  that  he  married,  and  for  a  time  settled 
quietly  and  happily  in  domestic  life.  Suddenly  all  was 
changed.  The  jealous  rival  Alcimus  saw  in  this  friend- 
ship the  ruin  of  his  own  hopes,  denounced  Nicanor  to 
the  King,  and  procured  an  order  that  Judas  should  be 
sent  as  prisoner  to  Antioch.  Nicanor  was  deeply  hurt. 
He  could  not  break  his  plighted  troth  to  his  friend. 
He  could  not  venture  to  disobey  the  royal  order.  His 
uneasy  conscience  showed  itself  in  the  fierceness  of  his 
temper  and  the  roughness  of  his  manners.  Judas 
boded  no  good  and  escaped.  A  skirmish  took  place 
between  him  and  some  of  the  royal  troops  at  Caphar- 
salama  in  the  plain  of  Sharon.  The  two  friends  parted 
to  meet  no  more. 

The  excited  tradition  of  the  next  generation  repre- 
sented the  furious  Greek  as  standing  in  the  great 
outer2  court  of  the  Temple  —  the  priests  and  chiefs 
of  the  people  vainly  endeavoring  to  propitiate  him  by 
showing  him  the  offering  prepared  on  the  altar  for  the 
welfare  of  the  Syrian  king.  With  an  insulting  gesture 
Nicanor  stretched  out   his    hand    to    the    Temple    and 

1  2  Mace.  xiv.  25,  (Vfl«r,  (vara-  2  2  Mace.  xiv.  81,  33.     The  pas- 

%f\(nv,  tKoivwvriffi  plov.   It  almost  looks  sage  well  illustrates  the  difference  of 

as  if   this  were  a  mistranslation   of  UpAv  and  va6s. 
part  of  Nicanor'a  advice. 


Lect.  XL VIII.  BATTLE   OF  BETH-HOEON.  357 

swore  that  unless  Judas  was  given  up  to  him  he  would 
level  the  building,  break  down  the  altar,  and  erect 
on  its  site  a  Temple  to  the  Grecian  Bacchus.  The 
terrified  hierarchy,  as  in  the  old  days,  took  up  their 
position  between  the  altar  and  the  Temple,  and  in- 
voked the  Divine  aid  for  their  sanctuary  so  recently 
purified.  Amongst  those  who  were  specially  obnox- 
ious to  Nicanor  was  Rhazis,  a  Jew  conspicuous  for  his 
austere  patriotism.  He  was  determined  not  to  give 
the  enemy  the  chance  of  insulting  bim  by  capture, 
and,  rather  than  yield,  endeavored  to  destroy  himself, 
first  by  falling  on  his  sword  in  the  tower  where  he  had 
taken  refuge,  then  springing  from  the  tower  to  the 
ground,  and  then,  despite  his  ghastly  wounds,  throw- 
ing himself  headlong  from  one  of  the  precipitous  cliffs 
of  the  city.  All  this  stamped  the  memory  of  Nicanor 
with  additional  horror.1 

At  last  the  vengeance  came,  in  the  fitting  place  and 
from  the  fitting  man.  In  that  same  memorable  Batt]e  of 
pass  of  Beth-horon  where  Judas  had  gained  his  f^n. 
first  victory,  he  was  now  to  gain  his  last.  B" c-  16L 
There,  amongst  his  native  hills,  he  was  encamped,  at  a 
village  at  the  foot  of  the  Pass.  He  felt  that  it  was 
again  one  of  the  critical  moments  of  his  life ;  and  his 
address  (so  it  was  believed  in  the  next  generation)  par- 
took of  that  strong  historic  enthusiasm  which  marked 
his  character.  He  told  his  army  that  in  his  dreams  he 
had  seen  Onias,2  the  last  blameless  High  Priest  before 
the  disorders  of  the  time  began,  whose  intercessions  had 
called  clown  the  ministers  of  Divine  wrath  on  Helio- 
dorus,  and  who  had  fallen  a  victim  to  the  sacrilegious 
jealousy  of  his  rivals  in  the  laurel  groves  of  Daphne. 
The  venerable  man  had  appeared  as  in  life,  the  true 

1  2  Mace.  xiv.  37-46.  2  2  Mace.  xv.  12-17. 


358  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVUL 

dignified  Priest,  the  true  Israelite  nobleman,1  with  his 
reverend  demeanor,  his  gentle  manners,  his  gracious 
utterance,  the  model  of  virtuous  training  from  his 
youth  upwards.  As  of  old  in  the  Temple,  so  had  he 
seemed  to  be  standing,  with  his  hands  outstretched  in 
prayer  for  the  whole  host  of  Judasa.  Suddenly,  in  an- 
swer to  the  High  Priest's  supplication,  there  started 
into  view  the  apparition  of  a  magnificent,  hoary-headed 
figure,  of  lofty  stature  and  commanding  presence. 
"  This,"  said  Onias,  "  is  the  lover  of  our  brethren,  the 
"  intercessor  for  our  people  and  our  holy  city.  This  is 
"  Jeremiah,  the  Prophet  of  God."  In  that  age  of  silent 
expectation  this  welcome  vision  of  the  Suffering  Ser- 
vant of  the  Eternal,  who  had  come  to  be  regarded  al- 
most as  the  Patron  Saint  of  Palestine,  might  well  have 
presented  itself  to  the  devout  warrior's  sleeping 
thoughts.  The  Prophet  seemed  to  stretch  out  his  right 
hand,  as  if  with  a  pledge  of  support,  and  gave  to  Judas 
a  golden  sword.  It  was  not  merely  like  the  short2 
weapon  he  had  hitherto  wielded  from  the  day  when  he 
took  it  from  the  dead  hand  of  his  earliest  foe  Apollo- 
nius,  but  the  huge  broadsword  of  the  Macedonian  pha- 
lanxes. "  Take  this  holy  sword,"  said  the  Prophet, 
"and  with  it  thou  shalt  crush  thine  enemies."3 

The  battle  was  felt  to  be  decisive,  especially  for  the 
Temple,4  which  ran  the  risk  of  another  defilement  or 
destruction  that  would  undo  all  the  labor  and  joy  of  the 
recent  dedication.  Alike  in  the  mountain  pass,  and  in 
Terusalem,  from  which  the  hills  which  encompass  Beth- 

1  KaKbv  k<x\  aya6<Sv.  The  Greek  ex-  the  venerahle  seer  of  the  past  as 
pression  for  "  gentleman."  2  Mace.  waP<iK\rjTos  -n-pbs  rbv  irarepa  (Grimm  on 
*v.  12.  2  Mace.  xv.  16). 

2  ^o/x^ala  in  2  Mace.  xv.  16,  as  dis-  4  rod  Kadriyiaa-fxtvov  vaov,  2  Mace. 
tinct  from  fj-^XaiPa  in  1  Mace.  iii.  12.  xv.  18. 

8  Philo  (De  Execratione)   regards 


Lect.  XLVIII.  BATTLE   OF  BETH-HOKON.  359 

horon  are  visible,  the  "  agony  "  was  intense.  The  in- 
trepid chief  with  his  small  band  saw  the  huge  and  varie- 
gated host  approach,  the  furious  elephants  snorting  in 
the  centre,  the  cavalry  hovering  on  the  wings.  It  was, 
if  ever,  a  time  and  place  to  invoke  the  Divine  aid 
which  supports  the  few  against  the  many.  It  was  not 
only  the  spot  where  Joshua  had  defeated  the  kings  of 
Canaan,  but  where  tradition  fixed  the  more1  recent 
deliverance  from  Sennacherib.  With  these  thoughts 
(and  in  this  both  the  earlier  and  later  narratives  sub- 
stantially agree)  Judas  raised  his  hands  to  heaven,  and 
called  on  the  All-seeing,  Wonder-working  God.  "  Thou, 
"  0  Lord,  sentedst  thine  angel  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah 
"  and  didst  destroy  from  the  camp  of  Sennacherib  an 
"hundred  and  fourscore  and  five  thousand.  Now,  0 
"  Ruler  of  the  Heavens,  send  a  good  angel  before  us 
"  and  strike  terror  and  trembling,  and  with  Thy  mighty 
"  arm  may  they  be  struck  down,  who  have  come  with 
''blasphemy  against  Thy  Holy  Temple  !  "  The  army 
of  Nicanor  came  on  with  trumpets  sounding  in  accord 
with  their  triumphal  heathen2  war-songs.  The  army 
of  Judas  advanced  (the  expression  reminds  us  of  the 
Ironsides)  "  fighting  with  their  hands  and  praying  with 
'  their  hearts."  The  rout  was  complete.  The  neigh- 
boring villages 3  and  the  surroundine*  hills  were  roused 
by  the  Roland-like  horn  of  the  Maccabees  to 
intercept  the  passes  and  cut  off  the  fugitives. 
There  was  a  later  tradition  still,  that  when  Judas  en- 
countered his  former  friend  in  the  battle  he  called  out 
'*  Take  care  of  thyself,  Nicanor 4  —  it  is  to  thee  that 
'*  I  come  !  "  But  in  the  earlier  version  it  was  Death  of 
not  by  the  hand  of  Judas  that  Nicanor  was  Nicanor- 

1  See  Lightfoot,  ii.  18.  8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xii.  10,  5 

2  2  Mace.  xv.  2f>  (Tratavcov) .  4  5  Mace.  v.  16. 


360  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVIII. 

slain  ;  lie  fell  in  the  first  onset  of  the  battle,  and  it  was 
only  after  its  close  that  his  corpse  was  found,  recognized 
by  his  splendid  armor.  Wild  was  the  exultation,  loud 
the  shout,  with  which  in  their  own  Hebrew  tongue  the 
Jewish  army  blessed  their  Divine  Deliverer.  Then  (it 
is  no  unfitting  conclusion)  laden  with  spoil  they  came 
in  triumph  to  Jerusalem.  Amongst  the  spoils  the  most 
conspicuous  were  the  head  of  Nicanor,  and  his  right 
hand  and  arm  from  the  shoulder  downwards,  which 
they  had  severed  from  the  body  as  it  lay  on  the  battle- 
field. The  Priests  assembled  before  the  altar  to  receive 
them.  The  head  and  hand  (like  Hasdrubal's  in  Han- 
nibal's camp)  were  held  up  before  the  Greek  garrison 
in  the  fortress.  The  head  was  fastened  to  the  fortress 
itself.  The  hand,  which  had  been  so  proudly  stretched 
forth  in  defiance  against  the  Temple,  was  nailed  to 
the  main  eastern  entrance  of  the  inner  court,  known 
long  after  as  the  Gate  Beautiful,  but  also  as  "  the  Gate 
"  of1  Nicanor "  from  this  terrible  reminiscence.  The 
tongue  with  which  the  insults  were  spoken  was  cut  into 
small  pieces  and  thrown  for  the  birds  to  devour.  It 
was  a  savage  revenge  —  so  savage,  and,  in  the  sacred 
precincts,  approaching  so  nearly  to  a  profanation,  that 
neither  Josephus  nor  the  earlier  historian  venture  to 
mention  it ;  but  told  in  such  detail  and  so  confirmed  by 
'long  tradition,  and  (alas!)  by  analogous  usage  in  so 
many  a  Christian  country,  that  there  seems  no  reason 
to  doubt  it.  One  further  honor  was  to  be  bestowed  on 
the  victory.     It  was  a  day  already  auspicious,  the  13th 

1  Another  explanation,  but  prob-  ster  swallowed  it  and  threw  it  out  on 

ably  of  ;i  Later  date,  was  given,  that  the  shore  at  Joppa,  where  he  found 

Nicanor,  an  Alexandrian  Greek,  had  it  on  his  arrival  (see  the  various  Rab- 

yrought  the  gate  from  Alexandria;  binical  quotations  collected  by  Herz- 

that  it  was  thrown  over  in  a  storm  fold,  ii.  345). 
to  lighten  the  chip;  that  a  sea-mon- 


Lect.  XLVIII.  BATTLE   OF   ELEASA.  361 

of  the  month  Adar  —  the  eve  of  the  Feast  of  Purim  — 
or,  as  the  historian  calls  it,  the  eve  of  "  Mordecai's 
"  Day;  "  and  the  anniversary  itself  was  to  be  hereafter1 
called  "  Nicanor's  Day." 

This  was  the  crowning  success  of  Judas.  A  wider 
sphere  seemed  opening  before  him,  a  new  and  Battle  of 
powerful  ally  was  on  the  point  of  joining  his  Death  of 
cause,  when  he  was  suddenly  cut  off.  The  b.c.  ibi. 
Syrian  army  under  Bacchides  advanced  down  the  Jor- 
dan valley  to  avenge  the  defeat  of  Nicanor.  From  a 
cause  which  the  historian  does  not  explain,  but  which 
incidental  illustrations  will  enable  us  presently  to  indi- 
cate with  fatal  precision,  Judas  found  a  difficulty  in 
mustering  his  forces.  A  veil,  as  it  were,  is  drawn  over 
his  last  effort.  Even  the  place  is  uncertain.2  We  caD- 
not  be  sure  whether  he  encountered  the  enemy  in  his 
old  haunts  in  the  valleys  branching  into  the  hills  from 
his  native  village,  or  whether  he  had  been  decoyed 
away  into  the  far  north  by  the  sources  of  Jordan,  or 
by  the  caverned  rocks  which  overhang  the  Lake  of 
Gennesareth.  In  the  latest  traditions3  he  is  repre- 
sented as  advancing  to  the  fight  with  the  lion-like  port 
of  his  earlier  days,  and  brandishing  his  sword,  whether 
that  which  he  had  won  from  Apollonius,  or  that  which 
he  had  received  from  the  Prophet  in  the  vision  at 
Beth-horon.  The  famous  trumpet  sounded  for  the 
last  time.  From  morning  till  night  the  conflict  lasted 
One  wing  of  the  Syrian  army  fled  before  the  charge, 

1  Herzfeld,  ii.  345.     See  Lecture  feld,  ii.  346)  (see  Lecture  L.);  and 
XLV.  in  that  case  Eleasa  might  be  Laish 

2  I  Mace.  ix.  2.     Galgala  is  Gali-  near  Dan.     But,  on  the  other  hand, 
lee  in  Joseph  us,  Ant,  xii.  11.   Arbela  it  seems  improbable  that  he  should 
also  points  to  the  fortress  above  the  have  ventured  so  far  from  Judcea. 
take  of  Gennesareth,  Masaloth  pos-         8  5  Mace.  v.  17,  3. 

sibly  to  its  well-known  caves  (Herz- 
46 


3G2  JUDAS  MACCABiEUS.  Lect.  XL  VIII 

but  the  other  pursued  the  pursuers,  and  between  the 
two  the  gallant  champion  was  caught.  His  watchword 
before  the  battle  was  cherished  as  his  latest  utterance. 
When  he  saw  the  odds  against  which  he  had  to  fight. 
"  God  forbid  that  1  should  do  this  thing  and  flee  away 
"  from  them ;  if  our  time  be  come,  let  us  die  manfully 
"  for  our  brethren,  and  let  us  not  leave  behind  a  stain 
"  upon  our  honor."  His  dead  body  was  found  by  the 
two  worthiest  of  his  brothers ;  they  laid  him  in  the  an- 
cestral sepulchre  at  Modin,  and  a  dirge  went  up  from 
the  whole  nation  for  him,  like  that  of  David  over  Saul 
and  Jonathan:  "How  is  the  valiant  man  fallen,  the 
"  deliverer  of  Israel !  " 

With  the  death  of  Judas  ends  the  first  stage  of  the 
struggle  for  independence.  Hardly  any  char- 
acter of  the  later  days  of  Judaism  so  strikes 
the  imagination  as  the  hero  who,  of  all  military  chiefs, 
accomplished  the  largest  ends  with  the  scantiest 
means,  who  from  the  brink  of  extermination  raised 
his  nation  to  a  higher  level  of  freedom  than  they  had 
enjoyed  since  the  fall  of  the  Monarchy.  "  He  had 
"  been  ever  the  chief  defender  of  his  countrymen 
"  both  in  body  and  mind ;  he  had  maintained  his  early 
"  love  for  his  people  unbroken  to  the  end."  2  No  con- 
flict in  their  history  has  been  more  frequently  recorded. 
Even  David's  story  is  told  but  twice  ;  the  story  of 
the  Maccaboean  struggle  is  repeated  at  intervals  of 
successive  generations  in  no  less  than  four  separate 
versions.  And  around  the  struggle  revolves  the  mys- 
terious book  which  still  exercises  the  critic,  which  still 
stirs  the  conscience,  which  filled  the  whole  imagination 
of  the  coming  centuries  of  the  Jewish  people.  When 
some  good  men   regard  it  as  a  disparagement  of  the 

i  1  Mace.  ix.  18-20.  2  2  Mace.  xv.  30. 


Lect.  XLVIII.  CAREER  OF  JUDAS.  303 

Book  of  Daniel  that  it  should  have  been  evoked  by 
the  Maccabsean  conflict,  it  is  because  they  have  not 
adequately  conceived  the  grandeur  of  that  crisis,  nor 
recognized  the  fact  that,  when  the  final  agony  of  the 
nation  approached,  two  centuries  later,  there  was  no 
period  which  so  naturally  supplied  the  imagery  for  its 
hopes  and  fears  as  that  which  was  covered  by  the 
blows  and  counterblows  between  Antiochus  the  Bril- 
liant Madman  and  Judas  the  Hammer  of  the  Heathen. 
If  in  the  visions  of  Daniel  the  anticipations  of  the 
deliverance  are  thought  worthy  of  being  announced 
by  the  Archangel  Gabriel,1  if  the  hero  who  shall  ac- 
complish the  deliverance  is  summoned  to  receive  his 
reward  by  myriads  of  ministering  spirits,  not  the  less 
in  the  poetic  accounts  of  the  second  book  of  Maccabees 
does  the  valiant  ruler  with  his  little  band  appear  sur- 
rounded by  angelic  champions.  Sometimes,  when  he 
is  marching  out  of  Jerusalem,  on  a  sudden  there  starts 
up  a  horseman  clothed  in  white,  who  heads  the  little 
band,  brandishing  his  shield  and  spear2  of  gold. 
Sometimes  in  the  thick  of  the  fray  five  splendid  horse- 
men start  as  if  from  the  sky,  rattling  their  golden 
bridles,  as  if  the  celestial  guardians  of  the  five  gallant 
brothers.  One  gallops  before,  and  on  each  side  of 
Maccabaeus  ride,  two  and  two,  the  other  four,  protect- 
ing him  with  shield,  and  spear,  and  sword,  and  darting 
lightnings  at  their  enemies.3 

Such  apparitions  —  the  vision  of  St.  Nicholas,  who 
was  supposed  in  1854  to  have  caught  in  the  air  the 
British  bombs  at  the  holy  fortress  of  Solowetzky ;  the 
counterparts  of  the  Twin  Gods  at  the  battle  of  the 4 

1  Dan.  vii.  14  ;    ix.   27  (Speakej-'s         3  StairpeTrels,  -iravoir\la.     2  Mace,  x 
Commentary,  vol.   iv.  336).  29,  30  (Grimm). 

2  2  Mace.  xi.  7.  *  Preface  to  Macaulay's  Lays  oj 

Ancient  Rome. 


364  JUDAS    MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVin. 

Lake  Regillus ;  of  St.  Iago  in  the  Spanish  armies :  of 
the  angels  of  victory  and  defeat  which  even  now  hover 
before  the  eyes  of  Russian 1  soldiers  in  the  crisis  of  the 
combat  —  are  the  outward  expressions  of  the  deep 
moral  significance  of  the  Maccabsean  struggle.  The 
sober  style  of  the  contemporary  account  is  content  with 
the  moral  qualities  of  the  human  hearts  and  hands  by 
which  the  victory  is  won.  But  the  interest  is  not  less 
vivid,  nor  the  glory  of  that  "  Son  of  Man  "  less  trans- 
parent, in  the  solid  prose  than  in  the  radiant  poetry 
of  the  period.  Let  us  consider  some  of  the  character- 
istics from  which  this  interest  is  derived. 

1.  There  may  be  a  momentary  disappointment  when 
Narrowness  we  ren"ect  that  the  special  objects  which  pro- 
of conflict.  voke(j  the  contention  were  such  as  the  highest 
religious  minds  of  subsequent  times  have  regarded  as 
trivial  or  temporary.  The  rite  of  circumcision,  for 
which  the  choicest  spirits  of  the  nation  fled  into  the 
caverns  and  hills  of  Palestine,  was  two  centuries  later 
regarded  by  Saul  of  Tarsus  as  absolutely  indifferent.2 
The  sabbath  and  the  sabbatical  year,  for  the  sake  of 
which  they  exposed  themselves  to  defeat  and  ruin, 
were  pronounced  by  him  to  be  amongst  the  beggarly 
elements  of  the  world  —  the  mere  shadows  of  reali- 
ties.3 One  of  them  has  been  abandoned  altogether  by 
;he  Jewish  race  itself,  the  other  has  been  so  modified 
in  the  Christian  world  as  to  have  almost  ceased  to  bear 
the  same  name  or  serve  the  same  end.  The  distinc- 
tions of  food,  which  to  the  martyrs  of  the  Maccabaean 
age  were  the  tests  for  which  they  endured  the  most 
cruel  torments,  were  declared  in  the  vision  to  Peter 
by  the  seashore  4  at  Joppa  to   be   of  not  the  slightest 

1  Kinglake's  Crimean  War,  i.  458.         8  Gal.  iv.  16;  Col.  ii.  16. 
8  1  Cor.  vii.  19;  Gal.  vi.  18.  4  Acts  x.  15. 


Lect.  XL VIII.  HIS   CAREER.  365 

importance  in  the  sight  of  God.  The  sacrifices,  of 
which  the  sudden  extinction  under  the  pressure  of  An- 
tiochus  seemed  to  be  the  cessation  of  the  very  pulse 
of  religion,  have  vanished,  and  the  neglect  which  once 
seemed  to  be  the  most  terrible  of  desolations  now 
reigns  through  every  church  and  through  every  syna- 
gogue. Even  the  hated  statues  and  pictures  of  hea- 
then divinities,  which  filled  with  horror  the  mind  of 
every  pious  Israelite  at  that  time,  now  stand  unchal- 
lenged at  the  corners  of  the  streets  and  adorn  the 
walls  of  the  houses  in  every  capital  of  Europe.  Doubt- 
less, as  was  urged  by  the  Alexandrian  Jew  Philo x  at  a 
later  epoch,  these  usages  each  contributed  to  the  sup- 
port of  the  Jewish  nationality,  so  that  (to  use  his  own 
homely  illustration)  "  if  one  brick  were  taken  out  the 
"  whole  house  would  have  fallen  to  pieces."  Yet  still 
the  tact  remains  that  there  was  a  narrowness  in  the 
conflict  which  in  time  was  destined  to  make  itself  felt. 
And  even  without  looking  further  than  the  career  of 
Judas  Maccabasus,  we  see  that  the  true  interest  of  the 
struggle  rose  above  these  external  watchwords,  and 
that  the  heroic  family  which  fought  for  them  had  a 
wider  and  deeper  insight  than  belonged  to  any  mere 
ceremonial  forms. 

2.  In  this  instance  the  danger  lay  in  the  absorp- 
tion of  Judaism  not  into  the  higher  spirit  of  E]evatioil  of 
Athens  or  Alexandria,  but  into  that  basest Spint- 
and  most  corrupt  form  of  heathenism  of  which  the 
very  name  "  Syrus  "  or  "  Syrian  "  was  the  byword. 
And  the  stern  resistance  to  it  is  a  signal  example  of 
the  "  stubbornness  and  stiffness  of  neck"  which,  says 
the  Rabbinical 2  tradition,  Moses  mentioned  as  a  fault, 
but  knowing  in  a  prophetic  spirit  that  it  would  be  not 

i  Ad  Caium,  99.  -  Itaphall,  i.  232. 


366  JUDAS   MACCABJEUS.  Lect.  XLVI1I 

the  ruin  but  the  salvation  of  the  people  against  force, 
and  fraud,  and  persecution. 

It  might  have  been  thought,  that  with  such  an  ex- 
cessive tenacity  to  these  outward  symbols,  the  nation 
would  have  felt  that  in  their  loss  all  was  lost,  and  re- 
signed itself  to  despair.  Not  so.  With  that  inextin- 
guishable fire  of  spiritual  faith  which  burned  beneath 
the  superficial  crust,  it  was  recognized,  even  in  that 
contention  for  the  framework  of  things  which  so  soon 
were  ready  to  wax  old  and  vanish  away,  that  there 
was  something  better  and  more  enduring  even  than 
Temple  or  sacrifice.  That  strain  which  we  hear  at 
the  moment  of  the  profanation  of  the  sanctuary  is  the 
prelude  of  a  higher  mood.  "  God  did  not  choose  the 
"people  for  the  place's  sake,  but  the  place  for1  the 
"  people's  sake."  The  calamities  which  befell  them 
were  felt  to  be  the  consequence  of  their  having  been 
"  wrapped  in  many  sins."  2  The  tendency,  so  natural 
at  such  moments,  to  throw  the  blame  on  others  was 
kept  in  check  by  the  genuine3  and  generous  senti- 
ment of  self-accusation  which  breathes  through  the 
histories  and  devotions  of  this  period. 

Of  this  elevation  of  religion  the  Maccabrean  family 
were  the  main  representatives,  and  thus  an  insensible 
undercurrent  of  divergence  sprung  up  between  them 
and  the  more  fanatical  of  their  followers.  The  "  Pious  " 4 
or  "the  Chasidim"  are  constantly  mentioned  as  a  party 
on  whom  the  true  patriots  were  obliged  to  count  for 
support,  but  on  whom  they  could  not  securely  reckon. 
The   unreasoning  abstinence  from  self-defence 5  on  the 

1  2  Mace.  v.  19.  *  1  Mace.  ii.  42. 

2  2  Mace.  v.  18.  6  1  Mace.  ii.  40. 
«  Dan.  ix.  4-19;  Psalm  lxxix.   9; 

2  Mace.  vi.  12-lG. 


Lkct.  XLVHI.  fflS   CAREEE.  367 

Sabbath  was  put  aside  by  Mattathias  with  a  disdainful 
impatience  —  according  to  one  account,  with  a  fine  in- 
sight into  the  spirit1  of  the  ancient  Law,  in  which  he 
seemed  to  see  that  its  purpose  was  not  to  destroy  life, 
but  to  save  it.  The  Priests  on  more  than  one  occasion 
brought  dishonor  on  the  cause  by  a  fanatical  foolhardi- 
ness,  which  the  wise  leader  of  the  insurgents  vainly 
strove  to  check.2  There  was  a  secret  reluctance  in  the 
stricter  party  to  break  altogether  with  the  legitimate 
successor  of  Aaron,  as  represented  in  the  renegade 
Priest  Alcimus,3  and,  although  it  is  not  expressly  men- 
tioned, we  can  hardly  doubt  that  the  elevation4  of  the 
Maccabsean  family  to  the  High  Priesthood,  of  which  the 
first  attempt  was  discerned  in  the  case  of  Judas,  though 
not  realized  till  after  his  death  in  the  person  of  his 
brother,  must  have  been  a  rude  shock  to  many  a  cher- 
ished prejudice.  The  race  of  Joarib  from  which  they 
sprang  was  studiously  disparaged ;  the  very  names  of 
Modin  and  Maccabee  were  twisted  into  words  of  igno- 
miny, signifying  "rebellion"  or  "revolt."5  It  would 
almost  seem  as  if  the  enlarged  policy  of  Judas  in  seek- 
ing allies  from  the  outside  world  was  the  object  of  sus- 
picion to  the  Mucklewraths  and  Macbriars  of  this  older 
Covenant,  and  thus  one  of  the  causes  of  that  sudden 
defection  of  his  troops  which  cost  him  his  life  at  the 
close  of  his  career.6 

1  Lev.  xviii.  5.  See  Raphall,  i.  drash  Hanuka.  "  Johanan  the  lead- 
242.  "  er  of   the   Pious  was  wroth,   and 

2  1  Mace.  v.  67;  vii.  13.  "said  to  the   Asmonean:  Is  it  not 
8  1  Mace.  vii.  14.                                    "written,   Cursed  is  the   man   that 

4  2  Mace.  xiv.  26.    Raphall,  i.  325.  "  putteth  his  trust  in  thee  while  his 

5  Raphall,  i.  345.  "heart   departeth   from   the   Lord; 

6  In  Gr'atz  (iii.  10),  copied  by  "but  blessed  is  he  that  trusteth  in 
Raphall  (i.  345)  without  verifica-  "the  Lord,  for  the  Lord  will  be 
tion,  there  professes  to  be  given  a  "his  trust?  Thou  and  thine,  I 
direct  proof   of  this  from   the   Mi-  "  and  mine,  we  represent  the  twelve 


368  JUDAS  MACCABiEUS.  Lect.  XLVIII 

Nor  did  this  alienation  of  the  narrow  spirit  of  the  re- 
ligious world  of  Judaism  from  the  heroic  chief  to  whom 
was  due  the  restoration  of  the  sanctuary  and  the  natioD 
terminate  with  the  disaffection  against  which  he  had 
to  contend  in  his  lifetime.  It  is  a  striking  fact  which 
can  hardly  be  accidental  that,  enshrined  as  was  his 
memory  in  the  popular  histories  which  live  in  the  suc- 
cessive books  called  after  him,  it  is  almost  entirely  dis- 
regarded in  the  traditions  of  the  Talmuclic  schools. 
Not  one  of  his  exploits  —  not  even  his  name  —  occurs 
in  the  Mishna.  In  the  annual  thanksgiving  which  com- 
memorates the  deliverance  from  Antiochus  the  name 
of  Judas  is  not  mentioned,  and  even  the  intervention 
of  the  family  is  veiled  under  the  nnhistorical  name  of 
Mattathias  the  High  Priest.1  As  Columba  in  Ireland, 
as  Joan  of  Arc  in  France,  as  Robert  the  Bruce  in  Scot- 
land, as  Simon  de  Montfort  in  England,  so  Judas  Mac- 
cabseus,  neglected  or  disparaged  by  the  ecclesiastical 
authorities,  received  his  canonization  only  from  the 
popular  voice,  and  from  the  judgment  of  posterity.  Yet 
in  a  certain  sense  this  disparagement  was  from  their 
point  of  view  more  just  than  he  or  they  could  have  dis- 
cerned at  the  time ;  even  as  the  real  grandeur  of  his 
cause  by  a  strange  irony  is  derived  in  large  measure 
from  the  nobler  side  of  the  Grecian  influences  which  he 
devoted  his  life  to  oppose. 

"tribes  of  the  Lord,  and  through  stands  it  is  a  mass  of  confusion.  It 
'mis  I  am  assured  the  Lord  will  is  Mattathias  the  High  Priest  who  ad- 
"havc  wron "In  wiuidrnusly."  But  I  dresses  the  Asmonean,  in  the  name 
am  informed  by  Professor  Neubauer  not  of  the  Chasidim,  but  of  the  con- 
that  this  is  an  incorrect  quotation,  gregation;  and  the  protest  precedes 
and  that  the  passage  from  the  Mi-  not  a  defeat,  but  a  victory.  The 
drash— itself  of  a  very  late  date,  Gentiles  in  question  are  not  the  Eo- 
the  twelfth  century  —  is  of  no  au-  mans,  but  the  Parthians. 
thority.  It  may  possibly  represent  ]  Raphall,  i.  345. 
some    earlier    tradition,    but    as    it 


Lect.  XL VIII.  HIS   CAREER.  369 

3.    That  spirit  of  patriotism  which  had  been  devel- 
oped by  the  longings  of  the  Captivity  and  the 

.r  J  O      O  L  .  Patriotism. 

joy  of  the  Return  assumed  at  this  epoch  a 
form  and  style  which,  more  than  any  previous  incidents 
of  the  Jewish  history,  recals  the  maxims  of  Greek  and 
Roman  history.  "  We  fight  for  our  lives  and  our 
"  laws."  "  The  jeopardizing  of  a  gallant  soldier  is  to  the 
'  end  that  he  might  deliver  his  people  and  win  himself 
"  a  perpetual  name."  "  Let  us  die  manfully  for  our 
"brethren  and  not  stain  our  honor."  "X  will  show 
"myself  such  as  mine  old  age  requireth  and  leave  a 
"  notable  example  to  such  as  be  going  to  die  courage- 
"  ously  for  the  honorable  and  holy  laws."  These  are 
expressions  which  are  Gentile  rather  than  Jewish, 
which  remind  us  of  Leoniclas  and  Horatius  Codes  more 
than  of  Joshua  or  David.  His  career  exemplifies  the 
profound  truth  of  the  Scottish  poet's  invocation, 

The  Patriot's  God  peculiarly  Thou  art, 

His  Friend,  Inspirer,  Guardian,  and  Reward. 

It  is  precisely  because  the  name  of  Maccabaeus  has  a  na- 
tional and  warlike  rather  than  a  theological  savor,  that 
he  has  deserved  a  special  place  amongst  the  heroes  of 
mankind,  as  combining  in  one,  in  a  preeminent  degree, 
the  associations  of  the  patriot  and  the  saint.  For  this 
reason  the  old  mediaeval  romancers  and  artists  did  well 
when  they  placed  him,  not  in  the  exclusive  circle  of 
Jewish  or  Christian  hagiology,  but  in  the  larger  sphere 
of  the  Nine  Worthies  drawn  from  every  nation  and 
land,  not  only  with  Joshua  or  David,  but  with  Alex- 
ander and  Caesar,  with  Arthur  and  Charlemagne.  For 
this  reason  the  greatest  of  modern  musicians,  when  he 
wished  to  celebrate  with  the  grandest  military  strains 
'he  return   of  a  youthful  Prince  from  the  victorious1 

1  The  Duke  of  Cumberland's  return  from  Culloden  in  1745. 
47 


370  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLV1IL 

campaign  in  which  he  had,  as  was  believed  at  the  time, 
delivered  his  country  from  the  bondage  of  tyranny  and 
superstition,  chose  as  the  framework  of  his  oratorio  the 
exploits  of  Judas  Maccabceus,  and  made  his  triumph 
over  Nicanor  the  occasion  for  the  chorus  which  has 
greeted  every  British  warrior  since,  "  See  the  Conquer- 
"  ing  Hero  comes." 

4.  But  the  broader  aspect  of  the  Maccabsean  history 
Gentile  ^s  not  confined  to  its  patriotic  fervor.  In  the 
Philosophy.  very  language  of  the  descriptions  the  Greek 
rhetoric  has  mingled  with  the  Hebrew  simplicity  so 
strongly  as  to  show  how  the  zeal  against  Hellenism 
failed  to  resist  its  subtle  and  penetrating  influence. 
The  first  book  of  Maccabees,  indeed,  retains  on  the 
whole  the  ancient  style.  The  lament  and  the  parting 
counsels  of  Mattathias  are  such  as  might  have  come 
from  the  life  of  Jeremiah  or  Ezra.  But  even  then  the 
military  and  geographical  details  have  a  tincture  of 
Polybius;  and  when  we  read  the  second  book,  the 
speeches  and  conversations  have  all  the  flow  of  the 
orations  which  Greek  and  Latin  historians  place  in  the 
mouths  of  their  heroes.  And  yet  further,  when  we 
arrive  at  the  fourth  book  —  of  uncertain  date,  and 
probably  the  last  native  offshoot  of  the  literary  stimulus 
of  the  Maccabsean  age  —  it  is  not  merely  the  form,  but 
the  substance  of  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  and  Zeno 
which  reigns  supreme.  It  is,  as  Ewald  says,1  our  only 
specimen  of  a  Jewish  sermon.  But  it  is  a  sermon  with- 
out a  sacred  text,  or  rather  its  text  is  the  government 
of  the  Passions  by  the  supremacy  of  Reason  or  Prin- 
ciple. It  is  Butler's  Discourse  on  Human  Nature  illus- 
trated, with  all  the  turgid  eloquence  of  the  Alexan- 
drian school,   by  the  story  of  Eleazar  and  the   seven 

1  Ewald,  v.  485. 


Lect.  xlviii.  his  career.  371 

martyrs  The  Four  Cardinal  Virtues  figure  in  the  place 
of  the  Mosaic  Law,  the  Law  itself  is  transfigured  in  the 
light  of  Greek  Philosophy.  The  imagery1  is  drawn, 
not  from  the  mountains  or  forests  of  Palestine,  but  from 
the  towers  and  reefs  that  guard  the  harbor  of  Alex- 
andria, from  the  legends  of  the  Dying;  Swan  and  of  the 
voices  of  the  Sirens. 

5.  There  was  a  still  more  definite  connection  be- 
tween the  faith  of  the  Maccabees  and  that  of  the 
Gentile  world  against  which  they  were  contending. 
We  have  watched  the  gradual  growth  of  the  Be]ief  in  Im_ 
belief  in  immortality  along  the  progress  of  the  mortahtv- 
Jewish  race,  through  the  faint  aspirations  of  the 
Psalmist,  deepened  by  the  misfortunes  of  the  Cap- 
tivity, colored,  perchance,  by  the  contact  with  Zoroas- 
trianism.2  We  have  seen  its  full  outburst3  in  the 
teaching,  if  not  of  Socrates,  yet  of  Socrates'  greatest 
disciple.  We  have  witnessed,  though  at  what  date  we 
know  not,  the  clear  and  vivid  statement  of  the  Greek 
and  Hebrew  belief  combined  in  the  culminating  rev- 
elation of  Alexandrian  Judaism,  "  the  Wisdom  of 
"  Solomon." 4  In  Palestine  the  prospect  of  futurity 
had  still  remained  under  the  veil  that  had  rested  on  it 
from  the  time  of  Moses ;  though  with  such  occasional 
glimpses  as  we  have  already  noticed  in  some  of  the 
bolder  utterances  of  Psalmist  or  Prophet,  The  one 
great  teacher  who  had  appeared  in  Judsea  since  Mala- 
chi  —  the  son  of  Sirach  —  was  entirely  silent  on  the 
world  beyond  the  grave.  "  0  death,  how  bitter  is  the 
"  remembrance  of  thee  to  a  man  that  liveth  at  rest 
'•  in  his  possessions  !  ....  0  death,  how  acceptable 
'  is  thy  sentence  unto  the  needy  and  unto  him  whose 

1  1  Mace.  xiii.  7;  ibid.  xv.  14.  8  Lecture  XL VII. 

2  Lecture  XLV.  *  Lecture  XL VI. 


372  JTDAS  MACCABJEUS.  Lect.  XLVIH. 

"  strength  faileth !  .  .  .  .  Fear  not  the  sentence  of 
"  death  ;  remember  them  that  have  been  before  thee, 
"  and  that  come  after  ;  for  this  is  the  x  sentence  of  the 
"  Lord  over  all  flesh."  In  this  calm  but  gloomy  res- 
ignation is  summed  up  the  experience  of  the  most 
gifted  sage  in  Palestine  twenty  years  before  the  Mac- 
cabaean  insurrection.  But  in  the  course  of  that  insur- 
rection—  or,  at  least,  in  the  records  of  it — "the  be- 
"  lief  in  immortality"  which  the  Grecian  philosophy 
had  communicated  to  the  Jewish  schools  of  Alexandria 
started  into  a  prominence  which  it  had  never  achieved 
before,  and  which  it  never  lost  afterwards.  "  It  is  true 
"  that  in  the  transfigured  form  in  which  they  corre- 
"  spond  to  the  true  Religion  these  hopes  had  long  been 
"  established  in  Israel  as  one  of  the  highest  and  most 
"  enduring  fruits  which  its  thousand  years'  experience 
"  had  brought  forth  upon  its  sacred  soil.  Not  till  now, 
"  however,  can  it  be  said  that  this  fruit  was  so  natural 
"  that  it  would  never  again  disappear  ;  and  if  the  im- 
"  movable  hope  of  immortality  and  resurrection  is  the 
"  true  and  only  weapon  that  cannot  be  wrested  from 
"  us,  by  which  in  the  spiritual  struggles  of  humanity 
"  all  the  sufferings  of  the  time  can  be  victoriously  en- 
"  duredj  all  the  tyranny  of  the  earth  broken  and  all 
"  imperishable  happiness  attained  —  it  must  be  admit- 
"  ted  that,  through  the  deep  surging  storm  of  the  age, 
"  there  was  sent  from  above,  in  this  faith  which  noth- 
"  ing  could  take  away,  the  only  sword  of  salvation, 
"  against  whose  edge  the  most  fatal  terrors2  would 
"  strike  in  vain."  It  is  not  only  that  in  the  Book  of 
Daniel,  with  a  precision  sharpened  by  the  intensity  of 
conflict,  it  is  announced  that  "many  of  them  that  sleep 
'in  the  dust  of  the  earth  shall  awake;  some  to  ever- 

*  Ecclus.,  xli.  1,  2,  3.  2  Ewal.l,  v.  30G. 


Lect.  XL VIII.  HIS   CAREER.  373 

'  lasting  life,  some  to  shame  and  everlasting  contempt. 
'*  And  they  that  be  wise  shall  shine  as  the  brightness 
"  of  the  blue  sky,  and  they  that  help  many  to  right- 
"  eonsness  shall  shine  as  the  stars  for  ever  and  ever."  * 
It  is  not  only  that  in  the  Psalter  of  Solomon 2  we  are 
told  that  "  whoso  fear  the  Lord  shall  rise  to  eternal 
"  life,  and  their  life  is  in  the  light  of  the  Lord  and  shall 
"  no  longer  fail."  It  is  into  the  very  tissue  of  the 
history  that  the  belief  is  interwoven,  and  in  forms 
which,  whilst  they  show  its  Western  origin,  show  also 
that  it  had  struck  root  in  the  Jewish  heart  with  all 
the  tenacity  of  an  Eastern  faith.  The  earliest  version 
of  the  story,  indeed,  is  still  silent,  like  the  son  of 
Sirach.  But  the  traditions  of  the  time,  as  handed  down 
in  the  second  and  fourth  books3  of  the  Maccabees,  re- 
late distinctly  and  firmly  how  the  seven  brothers  and 
their  mother  trusted  that  "  the  King  of  the  world 
"  would  raise  up  them  who  had  died  for  His  laws  unto 
"  everlasting  life."  And  not  only  in  the  words  but  in 
the  deeds  recorded  is  the  new  doctrine  exemplified. 
The  desperate  effort  of  Rhaziz  to  destroy  himself 
"  manfully "  rather  than  be  dishonorably  treated  by 
his  enemies,  in  the  very  Paganism  of  its  depreciation 
of  life,4  implies  a  new  form  of  contempt  for  death,  in 
the  mind  of  the  historian,  evidently  based  on  his  con- 
fidence of  another  state.  And,  yet  further,  offerings  for 
an  incident  is  recorded,  too  circumstantial  to  the  Dead' 
be  set  aside,  which  indicates  that  the  belief  not  only 

1  Dan.  xii.  2,  3  (Heb.).  the    Palestine    insurrection    implies 

2  iii.  16.  that  the  belief  had  reached  thither. 

8  2  Mace.  vii.  9.  This  book,  no  4  The  peculiar  characters  of  Sam- 
doubt,  as  being  abridged  from  a  son  and  Saul  gives  a  different  color 
work  written  in  Cyrene,  may  have  to  the  act,  in  2  Sam.  xxxi.  4;  Judg. 
been   more  easily  filled  with  Greek  xvi.  30. 

idoas.      Still,    the    connection    Avith 


374  JUDAS   MACCABiEUS.  Lect.  XLVIII 

existed,  but  had  already  begun  to  run  into  those 
curious  spec  alations  which  have  themselves  in  turn 
darkened  the  hope  that  engendered  them.  After  one 
of  the  battles  of  Judas  in  the  plains  of  Philistia,  when, 
according  to  custom,  they  rested  on  the  following 
Sabbath,  and  took  up  the  corpses  of  their  killed,  to  lay 
them  in  their  ancestral  tombs,  it  was  found  that  un- 
derneath the  inner  clothing  of  each  dead  man  were 
amulets  in  the  form  of  the  small  idols  found  in  the 
Temple  of  Janmia.1  It  was  the  last  lingering  trace  of 
the  ancient  Philistine  practice  of  taking  into  battle 
figures  of  their  divinities  as  charms  against  danger.2 
The  victorious  soldiers  of  the  Maccabcean  army,  with  a 
superstition  hardly  less  excusable  than  their  unfor- 
tunate 3  comrades,  sprang  to  the  conclusion  that  these 
amulets  had  been  the  destruction  of  those  who  had 
worn  them.  After  the  first  triumphant  exultation  that 
they  had  not  fallen  into  the  same  snare  as  others, 
Judas,  with  the  generous  4  sympathy  which  character- 
ized him,  was  struck  with  the  fear,  still  tinged  with 
the  same  confusion  of  ideas,  lest  the  gallant  survivors 
should,  by  the  common  partnership  of  war  and  nation- 
ality, share  the  guilt  of  the  crime  of  their  fellow-sol- 
diers, and  accordingly  caused  a  collection  to  be  made, 
niMii  by  man,  which  amounted  at  last  to  the  sum  of 
2,000  Greek  coins,  for  a  sacrifice  which  should  efface 
the  memory  of  the  sin  of  the  fallen  combatants.  The 
act  was  regarded  as  one  of  peculiar  significance; 
there  was  something  in  it  "noble,"  "becoming,"  and 
"  thoughtful,"  5  like  a  chief  who  felt  that  his  soldiers 

1  2  Mace,  xii.  39-45.  *  yswaios  'lovSas,  2  Mace.  xii.   42. 

2  2  Sam.  v.  21.     1  Cliron.  xiv.  12.         5  This   seems  to  be   the  meaning 
8  "  Those  on  whom  the  tower  of     of  the  whole  passage.     2  Mace.  xii. 

'  Siloam  fell,  were  they  sinners  above     40-45.     Observe  the  words  KaXeDs  — 
'all  men?"    (Luke  xiii.  4.)  acrreioos  —  SmAoyi^eros,    and    again, 


Lect.  XL VIII.  HIS   CAREER.  375 

were  part  of  himself  and  who  cast  a  glance  forward 
to  their  future  in  another  world.  The  offering  which 
they  thus  made,  collecting  for  the  whole  army,  might, 
perchance,  benefit  even  those  who  had  perished  with 
the  idolatrous  images  on  their  bosoms ;  it  would  still 
more  benefit  those  who  had  no  direct  share  in  the 
guilt ;  and  if  any  such  had  fallen  or  might  fall  in  the 
conflict,  it  might  even  be  considered  as  an  offering 
of  thankful  gratitude. 

The  whole  incident  is  full  -of  characteristic  traits ; 
the  last  flicker  of  the  old  Canaanitish  idolatry,  the 
inborn  superstition  of  the  Jewish  ra^e,  the  gracious 
act  of  the  leader,  rising  above  the  transitory  terror  of 
the  moment,  and  endearing  himself  to  the  troops  by 
his  care  that  they  should  not,  even  unconsciously, 
have  incurred  the  danger  which  he  apprehended.  But 
it  is  most  remarkable  as  exhibiting  what  has  been 
truly  called  "  the  earliest  distinct  assertion  of  a  Jewish 
"belief  in  the  resurrection,"1  and  that  belief,  as  it 
was  derived  in  the  first  instance  from  the  Greek  world, 
so  now  expressed  itself  in  a  practice  unknown  before 
to  Israel,  but  common  in  Greece,  of  making  offerings 
at  the  graves  of  the  dead,  which  should  divert  from 
them  any  glance  of  Divine  displeasure  that  might  rest 
upon  them.  In  the  Gentile  usage  it  took  the  form 
of  libations  or  sacrifices  to  the  departed  spirits  them- 
selves. In  the  Maccabgean  practice  this  was  modified 
m  accordance  with  the  nobler  religious  feeling  of 
Judaism,  by  addressing  them  not  to  the  dead  but  for 
the  dead  to  God.  In  this  form  it  passed  into  the  early 
Christian  Church,  but  with  the  further  change  of  sub- 

rpoTvtwTWKSruv  (=  fallen  in  battle)  —     here,   but   common   in   classical  au- 
tocar V0)/ —  in    LXX.    only    used     thors  for  "  a  thank-offering." 

1  Milman's  Hist,  of  Jews,  ii.  8. 


376  JUDAS   MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLVIII. 

stituting  the  simple  aspirations  of  prayer  for  the  cum- 
brous sacrifices  of  Jewish  and  Pagan  rites.  This  in- 
nocent thought,  based  on  the  natural  instinct  alike  of 
heathen  and  of  Jew,  at  last  culminated  in  the  elaborate 
system  of  buying  and  selling  of  prayers,  regardless  of 
the  reasonable  devotion  alike  of  Jew  or  of  Christian. 
But  the  practice  itself  belongs  to  the  earliest  and 
simplest  endeavor  to  unite  the  dead  and  the  living  in 
one  spiritual  communion. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  what  was  the  peculiarity  of  the 
superstitious  dread  which  Judas  sought  to  allay,  what 
the  beauty  of  his  act  as  it  seemed  to  his  Cyrenian  biog- 
rapher, what  its  connection  with  the  glorious  doctrine 
of  Grecian  philosophy,  which,  in  spite  of  his  stubborn 
resistance  to  Grecian  tyranny,  he  thus  solemnly  cele- 
brated at  the  altar  in  Jerusalem.  "  Resurrection,"  the 
great  word  of  the  New  Testament,  never  appears  in 
the  Hebrew  books  of  the  Old  Testament.  It  appears 
first  in  the  mouths  of  the  Maccabsean  martyrs  and 
heroes.  It  was  as  though  the  resurrection  of  the  na- 
tion gave  a  solid  shape  to  the  belief  which  henceforth 
was  never  to  be  lost. 

6.  There  is  one  more  aspect  of  the  Maccabsean 
struggle  which  has  left  a  yet  more  decisive  mark  on 
the  religious  history  of  the  nation.  For  the  first  time 
the  attack  of  their  enemies  was  directed,  not  only  (as 
in  the  invasions  of  the  Assyrian  or  Babylonian  kings) 
against  the  people,  the  city,  and  the  Temple,  but 
against  the  sacred  books  which  —  thanks  to  the  exer- 
tions of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  —  had  now  taken  their 
place  amongst  the  treasures  of  the  nation.  It  had 
been  the  object  of  the  Syrian  persecutors  to  destroy 
the  copies  of  the  Law  whenever  found,  or  to  render 
them  valueless  in  the  eyes  of  the  nation  by  painting  on 


Lect.  XLYIH.  HIS   CANON.  377 

their  margins  the  figures  of  heathen  divinities.  Such 
an  attempt,  as  in  the  parallel  case  of  the  Diocletian 
persecution  of  the  Christians,  must  have  had  the  nat- 
ural effect  of  causing  the  Jews  to  cling  more  closely  to 
these  monuments  of  their  faith,  and  to  gather  up  what- 
ever fragments  might  be  lost.  Such  a  feeling,  as  we 
have  seen,  had  already  manifested  itself  in  the  com- 
pilations of  ancient  documents  during  the  Exile,  and  in 
the  time  of  Nehemiah  produced  the  first  definite  at- 
tempt at  a  complete    collection.     That  collec-  The  addi- 

'   ,  tions  to  the 

tion  consisted,  according  to  the  earlist  extant  canon, 
tradition,  of  the  Pentateuch,  the  Prophets,  the  histories 
of  the  Kings,  the  writings  of  David  (whatever  may 
have  been  included  under  that  term),  and  the  royal 
letters  or  donatives  of  the  Persian  kings.  The  same 
tradition  that  ascribes  this  work  to  the  great  reformer 
of  the  fifth  century  before  the  Christian  era  records  a 
corresponding  work  of  the  great1  hero  of  the  second. 
As  Nehemiah  had  agglomerated  round  the  Law  the 
works  which  had  gradually  taken  form  by  his  time,  so 
"  in  like  manner  "  Judas  Maccabeus  and  his  compan- 
ions eagerly  gathered 2  round  Nehemiah's  group  of 
sacred  literature  the  scattered  remains  which  had  es- 
caped, like  fragments  of  a  wreck  or  survivors  of  a 
battle,3  or  "  brands  plucked  from  the  fire,"  out  of  the 
ruin  of  the  Syrian  war. 

It  was 4  the  last  instalment  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  and 

1  This  is  on  the  assumption  (as  8  SiaireTrrdiKOTa,  ibid.,  mistranslated 
generally  received)  that  "Judas,"  "lost."  See  Schleusner  in  voce. 
in  2  Mace.  ii.  14,  is  the  Maccabee.  Comp.  1  Mace.  ix.  49;  Judith  vi.  9. 
Herzfeld  (ii.  444)  supposes  him  to  be  See  the  striking  passage  in  Deutseh's 
another  Judas,  the  possible  author  of  Remains,  13. 

the  Epistle  in  2  Mace.  i.  10.     But  4  It  is  said  that  one  result  of  the 

t  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  it  was  extermination    of   the    Law  —  i.  e., 

intended  to  be  Maccabseus.  the  Pentateuch  —  by  Antiochus  was 

2  inurwriyaye,  2  Mace.  ii.  13,  14.  that,  in  order  to  supply  its  place  i' 

48 


378  JUDAS  MACCABiEUS.  Lect.  XL VIII. 

was  a  work  well  worthy  of  the  last  leader  who  com- 
manded the  unchallenged  reverence  of  the  Hebrew  race. 
It  may,  perhaps,  be  too  much,  on  this  single  testimony, 
to  ascribe  the  collection  to  himself  personally ;  though 
we  would  fain  imagine  the  nobleheartecl  warrior,  in 
the  days  which  followed  the  dedication  of  the  Temple, 
TheHagio-  or  *n  ^ne  brief  interval  of  domestic  peace  dur- 
grapha.  -^  ]^g  friendship  with  Nicanor,  recovering  and 
rearranging  the  precious  scrolls  which,  from  broken 
vault  or  limestone  cavern,  were  brought  to  his  care  to 
be  lost  no  more.  But  in  his  time  doubtless  the  work 
was  clone.  The  letters  of  the  Persian  kings,  as  having 
lost  their  interest,  were  now  laid  aside.  And  in  their 
place,  clinging  to  the  skirts  of  "  the  things  of  David," 
were  added  those  later  writings  which  had  either  ac- 
cumulated since  Nehemiah's  time,  or  by  him,  for  what- 
ever reason,  had  not  been  admitted.  There  was  the 
historical  work  of  the  Chronicler,  completed  shortly 
after  the  invasion  of  Alexander,  which  carried  with  it 
the  Book  of  Ezra,  not  yet  divided  into  its  twofold  parts 
of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  ;  and  the  comparatively  recent 
book  of  Esther,  so  specially  needed  for  the  Feast  of 
Purim.  There  was  the  book  of  Job  already  venerable, 
and  the  three  Hebrew  works  bearing  the  name  of 
Solomon,  the  latest,  as  we  have  seen,  probably  com- 
posed between  the  time  of  Nehemiah  and  the  Macca- 
bees. Finally  there  were,  if  so  be,  the  Psalms  which 
had  sprung  up  in  the  Maccaba3an  struggle,  and  the 
great  work  of  the  period,  almost  the  Gospel  of  the  age, 
the  Book  of  Daniel. 

.lie  synagogues  was   introduced  the  the  faithful  from  the   obligation   of 

Haphtara,  i.  e.,  the  reading  of  les-  reading    the   Pentateuch.      See    Dr. 

30ns  from  the  Prophets  and  some  of  Ginsbnrg,    in    his     article     on     the 

the    Hagiographa,    which    thus    lib-  Haphtara.     Kitto,   ii.  227,  228. 
crated    (from    Phatar,    to    liberate) 


Lkct.  XL VIII  THE   MACCABiEAN   CANON.  379 

Other  books  were  still  floating  to  and  fro,  the  Wis- 
dom of  the  Son  of  Sirach,  the  Psalter  of  Solomon. 
These  for  reasons  unknown  to  us,  were  not  accepted  by 
the  Maecabsean  compiler.  But  the  inestimable  addi- 
tions made  by  him  were  now  secured  to  the  sacred  vol- 
ume in  a  far  more  enduring  sense  than  was  thought  of 
by  the  historian  who  described  their  annexation  in  the 
subsequent1  century  —  '''they  remain  with  us."  The 
Hebrew  Canon  henceforth  consisted,  not  only  of  "  the 
"  Law  and  the  Prophets,"  but  also  of  this  third  instal- 
ment which,  from  the  roll  to  which  they  wTere  ap- 
pended, took  the  name  of  "the  Psalms,"2  or  more 
generally,  from  their  own  indeterminate  character, 
"  the  Writings,"  "  the  Sacred  Writings,"  "  the  Books," 
"  the  other  Books."  That  is  to  say,  inferior  as  their 
place  was  compared  with  the  older  volume,  they  took 
the  name,  which,  little  as  it  could  have  been  then  an- 
ticipated, was  destined  afterwards  to  comprehend  and 
throw  into  the  shade  the  titles  borne  even  by  the  ven- 
erated Law  and  the  inspired  Prophets.  They  were 
emphatically  "  the  Scriptures,"  the  "  Hagiographa," 
"  the  Holy  Scriptures,"  "  the  Bibles,"  the  "  Biblia 
"  Sacra  "  of  the  Jewish  Church.  Already  in  the  Book 
of  Daniel  there  is  a  slight  trace  of  the  name  "  Book  " 
or  "Bible,"  including  the  writings  of  Jeremiah.  But, 
as  a  general  rule,  the  name,  naturally  appropriate  to 
more  purely  literary  productions,  belonged  only  to 
these  later  additions,  and  it  was  only  long  afterwards 
chat  ii  ascended  to  its  higher  level  and  embraced  with 
an  iron  grasp  the  wdiole  multifarious  volume  of  the  Old 
and  the  New  Covenant. 

The  door  was  closed,  and,  as  far  as  the  Church  of 
Palestine  was  concerned,  no  new  intruder  was  ever  ad- 

1  2  Mace  ii.  14.  2  Luko  rxiv.  44. 


380  JUDAS  MACCAByEUS.  Lkct.  xlvhi 

mitted.  But  there  were  several  modifications  still  pos- 
sible, so  difficult  is  it  even  for  the  strictest  rigor  to  fetter 
those  books,  "  which  are  like  living  creatures  with  hands 
"  and  feet."  The  Word  of  God,  whether  written  or  un- 
written, cannot  be  bound  with  earthly  chains.  First, 
they  were  divided  and  sub-divided  afresh,  in  order  to 
assimilate  them  to  the  fancy  which  soon  sprang  up  of 
making  their  number  exactly  equal  to  the  twenty-two 
letters  of  the  Hebrew  alphabet.  For  this  purpose  the 
Law  wras  broken  up  into  five  parts,  the  Book  of  Kings 
into  four  parts.  The  Lesser  Prophets  were  broken  into 
their  component  twelve.  The  Greater  Prophets  were 
divided  into  the  Books  of  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  Isaiah. 
There  was  yet  another  subdivision.  The  "  Former  " 
prophets  comprised  the  historical  books  of  Joshua, 
Judges,  and  the  books  of  Kings.  The  "  Hinder " 
prophets  were  divided  into  the  "  Great "  (i.  e.  Jere- 
miah, Ezekiel,  and  Isaiah),  and  the  "  Small "  (i.  e.  the 
twelve  lesser  prophets),  Ruth  was  reckoned  as  part 
of  "  Judges,"  and  the  Lamentations  as  one  with  Jere- 
miah. Again,  either  for  the  purposes  of  public  reading 
or  from  doubt  as  to  their  character,  five  were  taken 
out  of  the  whole  collection,  and  ranged  on  separate 
rolls,  called  "  Megilloth."  These  were  Ruth,  Esther, 
Canticles,  Ecclesiastes,  and  Lamentations.  Secondly, 
the  arrangement  of  the  Books,  as  they  issued  from 
the  hands  of  the  Maccabasan  leader,  had  preserved  on 
the  whole  the  order  in  which  the  successive  accre- 
tions had  been  formed.  At  the  head  was  the  Penta- 
teuch ;  then  came  the  Books  which,  whether  of  the 
earlier  histories  or  of  the  Prophets,  properly  so  called, 
were  comprised  under  the  common  title  of  Prophet- 
ical. And  last  were  "the  Scriptures,"  ending  with  the 
Chronicles.     This  was  to  the  Jews  of  that  age  the  last 


Lect.  XL VIII.  THE   MACCAB^EAN  CANON.  381 

book  of  the  Canon.  But  all  this  time-honored  arrange- 
ment was  pulled  to  pieces  by  the  Alexandrian  critics, 
whose  labors  we  have  already  indicated.  They  deter- 
mined to  disregard  entirely  the  redactions  of  Nehemiah 
and  Judas  Maccabseus,  and  placed  the  books  as  far  as 
possible  according  to  their  subjects  and  chronology. 
"  The  collection  of  the  Prophets  "  was  torn  asunder, 
and  into  the  midst  of  it,  following  on  the  last  book  of 
the  Kings,  were  inserted  the  three  later  historical  books 
from  the  Hagiographa  —  the  Chronicles,  Ezra,  now 
broken  into  two  parts,  and  Esther.  These  were  fol- 
lowed by  the  poetical  books,  according  to  the  supposed 
order  of  their  authorship  —  Job,  the  Psalms,  the  Prov- 
erbs, the  Canticles,  and  Ecclesiastes ;  and  then  followed 
at  last  the  second  part  of  Nehemiah's  collection  of  the 
Prophets,  preserving  the  priority  of  the  twelve  Lesser 
Prophets,  and  thus,  with  a  true  instinct  of  the  latest 
book  of  the  whole  series,  closing  with  Daniel,  followed 
by  the  three  kindred  books  of  the  Maccabees.  This  was 
the  arrangement  which  prevailed  more  or  less  till  it  was 
once  more  disturbed  by  the  Churches  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, which  have  combined  by  a  rough  compromise  the 
Maccabsean  Canon  with  the  Alexandrian  order.  The 
Greek  Bible  kept  the  entrance  open  for  the  admission 
of  yet  newer  books,  for  which  Judas  Maccabeus  had 
left  no  place,  and  to  which  we  have  already  adverted. 
But  it  is  to  him  that  we  owe  the  distinction  between 
the  Hebrew  and  the  Grecian  books,  to  which  the  Re- 
formers returned,  and  which  remains  a  lasting  monu- 
ment of  the  victory  of  the  holy  Hebrew  cause  over  the 
Grseco-Syrian  kingdom,  though  in  quite  another  sense 
f,han  he  intended  it.  In  later  ages,  both  in  the  Jewish 
and  the  Christian  Church,  not  only  has  this  hard  line 
of  demarcation   been  questioned,  but  several  of  the 


382  JUDAS  MACCABEUS.  Lect.  XLV1II. 

books  which  he  admitted  —  Ezekiel,  the  Canticles, 
Esther,  and  Ecclesiastes  —  have  been  challenged.  Yet 
on  the  whole  his  judgment  has  been  confirmed.  The 
Greek  additions,  at  least  down  to  the  last  unexpected 
burst  of  Israelite  prophecy,  in  the  writings  of  the 
Evangelists  and  Apostles,  have  always  borne  even 
when  most  admired,  a  stamp  of  inferiority.  The  ori- 
ginal Hebrew  books,  even  when  most  open  to  censure, 
have  yet  a  native  vigor  and  conciseness  which  belongs 
to  the  old  Palestinian  atmosphere  —  "the  Rock  of 
<  Abraham,  from  whence  they  were  hewn."  Even  as 
i  theologian,  Judas  "  has  fought  the  battle  of  Israel."1 

1  1  Mace.  iii.  2. 


NOTE  ON  ACRA  AND  MOUNT  ZION. 


Without  embarking  on  the  intricate  question  of  the  interior  topography 
Df  Jerusalem,  there  are  two  points  which  are  clear  in  the  Macca-  %-lon  an(j 
oam  time  :  —  Acra. 

1.  "Mount  Zion  "  in  1  Mace.  iii.  37,  60  ;  v.  54  ;  vi.  62  ;  vii.  33  ;  xii.,  is 
the  Temple  Hill  —  that  which  in  2  Chron.  iii.  1  and  in  later  times  has 
been  called  Mount  Moriah. 

2.  The  "  city  or  citadel  of  David  "  (1  Mace.  i.  33  ;  xiv.  36)  is  that  which 
was  occupied  by  the  Syrian  fortress,  and  usually  known  by  the  name 
of  "  Acra  "  (with  the  definite  article)  "  the  Height  "  (1  Mace.  iv.  2  ; 
ix.  52  ;  x.  32  ;  xiii.  52  ;  xiv.   7  ;  2  Mace.  xv.  31,  35.) 

From  this  it  follows  :  — 

1.  That  "Mount  Zion"  had  changed  its  meaning  since  2  Sam.  v.  7,  9 
(1  Chron.  xi.  5),  when  it  was  identical  with  the  citadel  of  David. 

2.  That  "  Acra  "  afterwards  changed  its  meaning,  when  it  was  identified 
by  Josephus,  A?it.,  xii.  5,  4  ;  xiii.  6,  7  ;  B.  J.  v.  4.  1.  I.  22,  with  the 
Lower  Hill. 

3.  That  both  were  different  from  the  Baris  or  tower  occupied  by  the  Per- 
sian garrison,  close  to  the  Temple  (Neh.  ii.  8,  vii.  2)  and  apparently 
on  the  site  of  the  later  Tower  of  Antonia. 


NOTE  ON  THE  FEAST  OF  THE  DEDICATION. 


I  am  indebted  to  the  kindness  of  a  modern  Hebrew  scholar  for  the  ac- 
companying description  of  the  present  celebration  of  the  Hanucah  or  Feast 
of  the  Dedication  :  — 

"  The  Feast  of  Lights  is  observed  as  an  eight  days'  holiday,  on  which, 
'«  however,  all  manner  of  work  is  allowed  without  restriction.     At  home  on 
'  each  evening,  as  soon  as  possible  as  is  consistent  with  their 
''arrangements,  the  lights  are  lit,  commencing  with  one  green  jja„uca}, 
"  taper  on  the  first  night,  the  number  increasing  by  one  every 
'evening,  eight  being  used  on  the  last  occasion.     Tapers  are  the  ordinary 
'custom,  but  the  more  orthodox  people  use  oil  and  wick;  but  either  is 


384  NOTES.  Lect.  XL VIII. 

"allowable.  The  prescribed  formula  of  blessing  is  said  over  these  lights, 
"  and  they  burn  for  half-an-hour,  during  which  all  work  is  at  a  standstill. 
"  Latterly,  that  is  to  say  in  modern  times,  a  very  pretty  hymn  has  been  added, 
"  written  as  an  acrostic  by  one  Mordecai.  The  tune  is  popular,  not  only  in 
"  England,  but  throughout  the  world  where  Jews  are  to  be  found.  This 
"is  about  the  whole  of  the  home  service,  except  that  at  every  meal,  when 
"  grace  is  said,  a  special  prayer  is  added,  commemorative  of  God's  mercies 
"  in  rescuing  the  nation  from  the  hands  of  their  Greek  oppressors.  This 
"  prayer  is  also  said  in  synagogue  every  morning,  noon,  and  night,  being 
"  introduced  among  the  eighteen  Benedictions,  which  are  repeated  three 
"  times  daily  throughout  the  year. 

"  In  the  synagogue  the  feast  is  likewise  observed  with  some  solemnity. 
"  There  is  usually  a  large  gathering  on  the  first  night,  but  this  falls  off 
"  during  the  remainder  of  the  week.  Every  evening  during  the  week  the 
"  officiating  minister  ascends  a  platform  and  lights  the  candles  as  at  home 
"  exactly.  Here  large  wax  candles  are  employed  ;  oil  is  allowed,  but  I  have 
"  never  seen  it.  The  hymn  referred  to  before  is  not  said  in  synagogue,  but 
"  Psalm  xxx.  is  repeated  instead,  more  stress  being  laid  upon  the  opening 
"  evening's  service  than  the  others.  In  the  more  important  metropolitan 
"  synagogues,  the  service  on  the  first  night  is  stirring  and  choral. 

"  Ordinarily,  on  Mondays  and  Thursdays,  a  scroll  of  the  Law  is  taken 
"  from  the  Ark  and  a  small  portion  of  the  Pentateuch  is  read  to  the  con- 
«  gregants,  varying  from  a  dozen  to  two  dozen  verses,  but  during  Hanucuh 
"the  Law  is  read  every  morning.  As,  however,  there  is  naturally  no  allu- 
"  sion  to  the  Feast  of  Dedication  to  be  found  in  the  Pentateuch,  the  history 
"of  the  Dedication  of  the  Tabernacle  is  read  in  lieu  of  it,  as  being  the 
"  readiest  reminder  ;  and  this  is  subdivided  into  eight  sections,  one  for  each 
"day.  On  the  Sabbath  of  the  feast  (there  may  be  two  Sabbaths  if  the 
"  first  day  is  Saturday)  this  section  is  read  in  addition  to  the  Lesson  of  the 
"  day,  so  that  two  scrolls  are  removed  from  the  Ark  ;  the  reading  from  the 
"  Prophets,  common  to  every  Sabbath,  is  selected  from  Zechariah  ii.  14  to 
"  iv.  7,  as  being  most  appropriate.  The  sermon  of  the  day  is  usually  de- 
•''  voted  to  the  events  being  commemorated.  The  period  is  marked  by  an 
:'  extra  half-holiday  or  so  being  given  in  schools  during  the  week,  a  festive 
'  entertainment  being  often  added." 


Lect.  XL VIII.  NOTES.  385 


NOTE    ON    THE    CHRONOLOGICAL    STATEMENTS    OF 
DANIEL  IX.  24-27. 


"  I  know,"  said  St.  Jerome,  "  that  this  passage  has  been  much  disputed 
"  amongst  the  most  learned  men.  Each  has  spoken  the  opinions  suggested 
"  by  bis  own  mind.  And,  therefore,  because  I  consider  it  dangerous  to 
"  pass  judgment  on  the  views  of  the  Doctors  of  the  Church,  and  invidious 
' '  to  prefer  one  to  another,  I  will  state  what  each  one  has  thought,  and 
"leave  it  to  the  option  of  the  reader  whose  interpretation  he  shall 
"  follow." 

Such  is  the  statement  prefixed  to  the  elaborate  summary  of  the  contradic- 
tory opinions  in  the  "  Speaker's  Commentary  on  the  Book  of  Daniel,"  pp. 
360-365,  which  concludes  with  the  words,  "It  is  impossible  at  present  to 
"  explain  the  passage  satisfactorily." 

It  is  not  in  accordance  with  tbe  plan  of  this  work  to  discuss  these  several 
opinions.  But  it  is  permissible,  and  may  be  useful,  to  state  the  view  which 
is  commended  to  us  by  the  nearest  contemporary  authority  and  by  the  near- 
est coincidence  of  fact. 

According  to  this  view  in  Dan.  ix.  25,  "the  commandment  to  rebuild 
"  Jerusalem  "  is  the  prophecy  of  the  seventy  years  in  Jeremiah,  B.  C.  588 
(Dan.  ix.  2)  ;  the  Anointed  Prince  is  Cyrus,  as  in  Isaiah  xlv.  1.  B.  c.  536. 
More  doubtfully,  in  Dan.  ix.  21,  "  the  death  of  the  Anointed  one  without  a 
"successor"  (Heb.)  is  Onias  the  high  priest  (2  Mace.  iv.  35),  which  is  sub- 
stantially the  explanation  of  Eusebius  (H.  E.  i.  6,  Demonst.  Ei\  viii.  391). 
"  The  Prince  who  shall  destroy  the  city  and  sanctuary,  whose  end  shall  be 
"  sudden,"  in  Dan.  ix.  26,  is  Antiochus  Epiphanes  (1  Mace.  vi.  8).  In 
Dan.  ix.  27  (compare  viii.  11,  xii.  12)  the  cessation  of  the  daily  sacrifice  is 
the  cessation  described  in  1  Mace.  i.  54,  and  the  Abomination  of  Desolation 
(Dan.  xi.  31,  xii.  12)  is  the  desecration  of  the  altar  by  Antiochus  as  de- 
scribed under  that  same  phrase  in  1  Mace.  i.  54.  The  three  years  (Dan. 
viii.  14,  xii.  11,  12)  relate  to  the  interval  between  the  desecration  and  the 
re-consecration  of  the  altar  (1  Mace.  ii.  54,  iv.  52). 

The  only  illustrations  from  any  other  part  of  the  Bible  are  to  be  found  in 
the  application  of  the  words  "  the  Abomination  of  Desolation  "  in  Matt. 
xxiv.  15,  Mark  xiii.  14,  to  the  desecration  of  the  Herodian  temple  by  the 
Roman  Government.  Such  a  secondary  application  is  in  accordance  with 
the  well-known  usage  of  the  New  Testament,  as,  for  example,  Matt.  ii.  15, 
18,  Acts  vii.  3,  Rev.  xi.  11,  xviii.  2. 

The  expression,  "  One  like  to  a  Son  of  Man,"  in  Dan.  vii.   13  1  (Heb.) 

1  The  Authorized  Version:  "  The  truth,  must,  if  literally  rendered,  be 
"Son  of  Man,"  however  accurate  as  altered  into  "  A  Son  of  Man."  — 
i  mode  of  expressing   a    Christian     Speaker's  Commentary,  vol.  vi.  328. 


386  NOTES.  Lect.  XLVIH 

is  explained  in  Dan.  vii.  27,  to  be  "the  people  of  the  saints."  The  phrase 
"  Son  of  Man,"  in  the  only  other  place  in  which  it  occurs  in  Daniel  (viii. 
17),  agrees  with  its  universal  signification  in  the  Old  Testament,  viz.,  as 
representing  man,  collectively  or  individually,  in  his  mortal  and  fragile  as- 
pect. See  especially  Psalm  viii.  4,  lxxx.  47,  and  the  forty-seven  times  in 
which  it  is  applied  to  Ezekiel. 

It  is  in  the  book  of  Enoch  that  it  is  first  applied  to  the  Chosen  One  who 
is  to  judge  the  world,  (xlv.  3,  5  ;  xlvi.  3,  6  ;  xlvii.  3  ;  lxii.  2,  5  ;  Ixii.  27, 
29  ;  lxx.  1.  The  references  are  given  at  length  in  Dr.  Pusey's  "  Daniel 
the  Prophet,"  382-385.)  That  numerous  applications  of  these  passages  may 
be  made  to  the  events  of  the  Christian  history,  past  or  future,  is  obvious. 
The  only  purpose  here  is  to  point  out  —  what  is  admitted  by  almost  all 
scholars  (see  Speaker's  Commentary,  iv.  337,  365)  — that  their  primary  and 
historical  reference  is  to  the  Maccabaean  age. 


THE 

ROMAN    PERIOD, 


B.  C.  160   TO   A.  D.  70. 


LECTURE    XLIX. 
THE   ASMONEAN   DYNASTY. 


AUTHORITIES. 

(1)  1  Maccabees  ix.  23-xvi. 

(2)  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  1-1 G. 

(3)  5  Maccabees  xviii.-xxxiv. 

(4)  Book  of  Judith,  b.  c.  130? 

(5)  Sibylline  Books  (iii.  828)  B.C.  120,  see  Lecture  XL VII. 

(6)  Book  of  Enoch,  B.C.  J 15?  which  is  found  (1)  in  Epistle  of 
Jude,  verses  14,  15;  (2)  Fragments  preserved  by  Georgius  Syncellus, 
A.  d.  792,  and  discovered  by  Scaliger ;  (3)  in  the  Ethiopic  Bible,  dis- 
covered in  1773  by  Bruce,  the  Abyssinian  traveller,  and  translated  into 
English  by  Archbishop  Laurence,  1838,  and  into  German,  with  notes 
and  discussions,  by  Dillmann,  1853. 

(7)  Tbe  Book  of  Jubilees?  Probably  b.  c.  100-1?  quoted  in  Clem. 
Recog.  xxx.,  xxxii.,  perhaps  in  2  Peter  ii.  4,  Jude  6,  and  in  various 
later  authors,  collected  in  Fabricius'  Codex  Pseudep.,  v.  i.  849-863  un- 
der the  name  of  "  Little  Genesis ;  "  originally  in  Hebrew,  translated 
into  Greek,  and  found  in  an  Ethiopic  version  in  1844  by  Kraff,  and 
rirst  brought  to  notice  by  Ewald  (Dr.  Ginsburg,  in  Kitto,  ii.  669,  670). 
Its  date  and  origin  are,  however,  too  uncertain  to  justify  much  remark. 

(8)  The  Talmudical  traditions,  given  in  Derenbourg,  Histoire  de  la 
Palestine,  ch.  iv.  v.  vi.  vii.  viii. 


THE   ROMAN   PERIOD. 


LECTURE  XLIX. 

THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY. 

The  chief  offence  which  alienated  from  Judas  Macca- 
bseus  the  fanatical  spirits  amongst  his  countrymen 
seems  to  have  been  an  act  of  which  he  did  not  live  to 
reap  the  fruits,  but  which  indicates  the  opening  of  a 
new  epoch  in  Palestine.  He  had  heard  of  a  mighty 
people  in  the  far  West  who  might  assist  his  country  in 
her  struggles.  There  had  been  during  his  father's  time 
in  Syria  one  who  could  have  told  more  of  the  prowess 
of  Rome  than  any  other  man  living.  It  was  only  thirty 
years  before  the  Maccabsean  Insurrection  that  Hannibal 
came  from  Carthage  to  the  cradle  of  his  race  at  Tyre 
and  thence  to  Antioch 1  in  the  fond  hope  of  rousing  the 
East  against  his  ancient  foe,  and  thus  fulfilling  to  the 
last  his  own  early  vow  of  eternal  enmity  against  the 
Roman  State,  which  is  known  to  us  only  through  his 
own  conversations  in  this  his  latest  journey.  A  confused 
story  of  a  letter  from  two  Roman  Consuls  occurs  in 
the  doubtful  legends  of  the  campaign  against  Lysias.2 
Whether  from  these  or  other  sources  had  come  ac- 
counts of  the  rising  nation  in  the  latest  days  of  the 
Maccabee  which  commanded   the  whole   attention    at 

1  Polyb.  iii.  11.    Liv.  xxxiii.  45.  2  2  Mace.  xi.  84. 


390  THE   ASMONEAU  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX 

ouce  of  his  powerful  intellect  aud  his  lofty  soul.  He 
had  heard  of  their  rapid  growth '  and  their  astounding 
valor.  He  was  full  of  their  recent  victory  over  the 
Galatian  or  Celtic  tribes  of  Asia  Minor  who  had  assisted 
the  Syrian  Monarch  in  his  war  against  them.  He  had 
The  Treaty  been  deeply  impressed  by  the  tidings  that  they 
b.  c.  162.  had  made  themselves  masters  of  Spain,  with 
its  mines  of  gold  and  silver  —  that  distant  dependency, 
the  America  of  the  old  Eastern  world  —  even  then  so 
hard  to  conquer  and  so  difficult  to  keep.  He  had  heard 
of  their  victories  over  the  kings  of  Greece,  still  veiled 
to  his  eyes  under  the  name  of  Chittim  or  Cyprus,  and 
naturally,  with  all  details,  of  their  successful  encounters 
with  the  foremost  prince  of  the  Asiatic  kingdoms  in 
these  latter  days  —  Antiochus  the  Great.  But,  most  of 
all  —  and  here  the  Israelite  hero  rises  at  once  to  the 
fullest  appreciation  of  the  true  majesty  of  Rome,  and 
also  gives  us  the  fullest  insight  into  the  simple  dignity 
of  his  own  elevated  spirit  —  he  knew  that  "  whom  they 
"  would  help  to  a  kingdom,  they  reign  ;  whom,  again, 
"  they  would,  they  displace  ; "  "  finally,  that  they  were 
'•'highly  exalted:  yet  for  all  this"  (so  unlike  the 
Princes,  great  and  small,  in  Asia,  past  or  present) 
"  none  of  them  wore  a  crown  or  was  clothed  in  purple 
"  to  be  magnified  thereby."  Moreover,  "  how  they  had 
"made  for  themselves  a  senate-house,  wherein"  (the 
inaccuracies 2   of  detail  only  confirm  the  general  faith- 

1  1  Mace.  viii.  1-16.  oner.     4.  His  dominions  did  not  in- 

8  The  inaccuracies  in  the  account  elude  India.  5.  The  conquest  of  .jEto- 

are    as   follows  :    1.  Spain   was    not  lia  was  fifteen   years  later.     6.  The 

wholly    reduced    till    the    reduction  Senate  was  not  320,  but  300.    7.  One 

of  Cantabria,  B.  c.  19.     2.  The  ele-  consul  is  substituted  for  two-    8.  The 

phants   at  the   battle   of   Magnesia  Roman   factions   are   ignored.     The 

were  not  120,  but  (Liv.  xxxviii.  39)  total  omission  of  the  conquest  of  Car- 

54.   3.  Autiochus  was  not  taken  pris-  thage  is  difficult  to  explain. 


Lect.  XLIX.  THE   TREATY   WITH  ROME.  391 

fulness  of  the  impression)  "  three  hundred  and  twenty 
"men  sat  in  council  daily,  consulting  always  for  the 
"  people  to  the  end  that  they  might  be  well  ordered ; 
"  and  that  they  committed  their  government  to  one 
"  man  every  year,  who  ruled  over  all  their  country, 
"and  that  they  were  all  obedient  to  that  one  "  (and 
here  we  mark  how  untarnished  still  remained  the  ideal 
of  "the  brave  days  of  old,"  when  "none  were  for  a 
"  party  and  all  were  for  the  State  "),  "  there  was  neither 
l(  envy  nor  emulation  amongst  them."  It  is  a  moment 
impressive  in  the  retrospect,  and  must  have  been,  even 
at  the  time  before  the  consequences  of  the  act  could 
be  apprehended,  when  in  the  Roman  Senate  there  ap- 
peared two  ambassadors  from  the  insurgents  of  Pales- 
tine, asking  in  the  name  of  Judas  Maccabseus  for  an 
alliance  with  the  Imperial  Commonwealth  —  the  first 
moment  that  the  representatives  of  the  two  nations  had 
met  face  to  face.  From  their  Greek  names,  Jason  and 
Eupolemus,  it  may  be  inferred  that  Judas,  with  his 
usual  sagacity,  had  chosen  his  envoys,  not  from  the 
stricter,  but  the  free-minded  section  of  his  nation.  The 
journey  had  been  "long  exceedingly."  The  august 
assembly,  according  to  their  custom,  received  them  in 
their  full  sitting.  A  treaty  offensive  and  defensive  was 
agreed  upon,  and  written  on  two  sets  of  brazen  tablets. 
One  was  deposited,  as  usual,  in  the  Tabularium  beneath 
the  Capitol.1 

The  copy  was  sent  to  Jerusalem ;  its  opening  words, 
though  known  to  us  only  in  Greek,  betray  the  fine  old 
Roman  formula — "Quod  felix  faustumque  sit  populo 
'Romano2  et  genti  Judseormn."  Before  it  arrived,  its 
bold  contriver  had  paid  the  penalty  of  his  enlarged  pol- 
icy on   the  battle-field.     But  its  fruits  remained,  and 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xii.  10,  6.  2  Grimm  on  1  Mace.  viii. 


392  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX 

from  henceforth,  for  good  or  evil,  the  fortunes  of  the 
Jewish  State  were  inextricably  bound  up  with  those  of 
its  gigantic  ally  —  at  first  of  friendly  equality,  soon  of 
complete  dependence,  then  of  violent  conflict,  finally 
of  the  profoundest  spiritual  relations  —  each  borrowing 
from  each  the  peculiar  polity,  teaching,  superstitions, 
vices,  and  virtues  of  the  other.  When  Antiochus  Epi- 
phanes  was  negotiating  with1  Popilius  Lamas  on  the 
seashore  of  Egypt,  the  Roman  envoy  drew  with  his 
staff  a  boundary  in  the  sand,  out  of  which  he  forbade 
the  Syrian  king  to  move.  Such  was  the  invisible  circle 
within  which  from  henceforth  Judsea  was  inclosed  by 
Rome ;  within  which,  he  may  add,  the  power  of  Rome 
was  henceforth  inclosed  by  the  religion  of  Judsea.  Into 
the  Tiber,  to  use  the  expression  of  the  later  Roman 
poet,  henceforth  flowed  the  Orontes.  The  Jordan,  as 
in  the  early  Roman  mosaics,  henceforth  assumed  the 
attitude 2  and  physnomy  of  Father  Tiber. 

With  this  thought  ever  before  us  we  return  to  the 
history  of  the  struggle  in  Syria.  From  this  time  it  as- 
sumes a  different  form,  to  understand  which  requires  a 
brief  retrospective  survey. 

So  long  as  the  heat  of  the  contest  with  Antiochus 
The  Jewish  continued,  there  could  be  no  recognized  gov- 
institutions.  ernment  0f  th e  nation.  The  commanding  char- 
acter  and  magic  spell  of  the  Maccabee's  name  was  suf- 
ficient. But  now  that  he  was  gone,  and  that  his 
victory  had  virtually  secured  the  independence  of  his 
country,  it  becomes  necessary  to  review  the  position  of 
':he  ancient  institutions  at  this  crisis. 

Since  the  death  of  Zerubbabel,  the  High  Priest  had 

1  Liv.  xlv.  12.  last  taken  by  the  Jews  (5  Mace.  xvL 

■  Even  the  Roman  name  of  God,     26). 
1  Deus  optimus  maximus,"  was  at 


Lect.  xlix.  the  pontificate.  393 

become  virtually  the  representative  of  the  people.  The 
investment  of  Ezra  and  of  Nehemiah1  with  the  The  PoRtifi. 
office  of  the  Perisan  Governor  gave  them  for  cate' 
the  time  supreme  authority.  One  momentary  chance 
had  opened  for  the  rise  of  a  prince  '2  of  the  Royal  line 
in  the  questionable  claim  of  the  sons  of  Tobias.  But 
these  were  exceptions.  The  descendants  of  Aaron  took 
their  natural  place  at  the  head  of  the  nobles,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  any  other  authority.  Many  of  their  ancient 
prerogatives  were  gone.  The  oracular  breast-plate  had 
never  returned  from  Babylon.  The  sacred  oil  had 
never  been  recoveied3  —  and  in  consequence  the  pro- 
fuse unction  which  had  enveloped  their  whole  persons 
in  its  consecrating  fragrance,  through  hair,  and  beard, 
and  clothes  down  to  their  feet,  had  been  long  discon- 
tinued. The  elaborate  ceremonial  of  the  sacrifice  of 
the  bullock  had  also  dropped.  In  the  place  of  these 
the  sanctity  of  the  office  was  now  wrapped  up  in  the 
blue  robe  with  its  tinkling  bells,  the  long  golden  sash, 
the  high  blue  turban,  in  which  at  his  accession  the  new 
High  Priest  was  clothed,  and  in  which,  whatever  might 
be  his  ordinary  dress,  he  discharged  his  public  offices. 
One  relic  of  the  ancient  insignia  had  been  preserved, 
which  was  probably  prized  as  the  most  precious  of  all. 
It  was  the  golden  plate  affixed  to  the  turban,  inscribed 
"Holiness  to  Jehovah,"  which  was  believed  to  have 
come  down  from  the  time  of  Aaron,  and  which,  treas- 
ured through  all4  the  vicissitudes  of  the  Jewish  State, 
was  carried  to  Rome  by  Titus,-  and  seen  there  by  a 
great  Jewish  Rabbi  in  the  time  of  Hadrian.  Whosoever 
had  these  paraphernalia  in  his  possession  had  virtually 

1  See  Lecture  XLIII.  *  Josephus,  Ant,  iii.  3,  6;  vii.  3,  8; 

a  See  Lecture  XL  VII.  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  i.  807. 

8  Roland  de  Rebus  et  Locis  Sacris. 
50 


394  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.      Lect.  XLIX. 

the  appointment  to  the  office.  There  have  been  many 
later  occasions  in  ecclesiastical  history  in  which  exces- 
sive importance  has  been  ascribed  to  vestments,  but  the 
conveyance  of  the  sacerdotal  succession  through  the 
dress  of  the  High  Priest  is  the  highest  point  to  which 
this  peculiar  form  of  veneration  has  reached.  Still, 
down  to  the  troubles  of  the  Syrian  war,  the  post  of 
High  Priest  was  rigidly  confined  to  the  lineal  descend- 
ants of  Joshua,  the  Pontiff  of  the  Return,  and  so  re- 
mained, even  through  all  the  violence  and  disorder 
which,  first  in  the  family  of  Eliashib  and  then  of  Onias, 
marked  its  occupants.  Of  these  the  last  was  Menelaus, 
in  the  Jewish  nomenclature  Onias,  the  renegade  who 
had  led  Antiochus  into  the  Temple,  and  secured  for 
himself  the  golden  candlestick.  After  long  struggles  to 
maintain  his  office,  sometimes  in  the  Temple,  more 
usually  in  the  Syrian  fortress,  he  was  represented  in 
varying  traditions  to  have  met  with  the  fitting  reward 
of  his  misdeeds.  According  to  one  he  was  thrown  head- 
long into  a  tower  full  of  ashes  —  as  if  to  requite  him 
for  his  profanation  of  the  sacred  ashes1  on  the  altar. 
According  to  another,  which  clung  to  the  hope  that  the 
High  Priest,  wicked  as  he  was,  had  repented  at  last, 
he  was  sawn  asunder  for  refusing  to  participate  further 
in  the  plunder2  of  the  Temple.  The  Syrian  Govern- 
ment appointed  in  his  place  Eliashib  or  Jehoiakim, 
more  usually  known  by  his  Greek  name  of  Alcimus. 
He,  according  to  a  popular  legend  just  mentioned,  was 
the  nephew  of  the  chief  Rabbi  of  that  time,  Joseph,  son 
of  Joazar,  who  was  impaled  by  the  Syrian  persecutor. 
Alcimus  rode  by  in  state  as  he  saw  his  uncle  hanging 
en  the  instrument  of  torture.  "  Look  at  the  horse 
"  which  my  master  has  given  to  me,"  he  said,   "  and 

1  2  Mace.  xiii.  5-8.  2  Dercnbourg,  53. 


Lect.  xlix.  tee  pontificate.  395 

fi  look  at  that  which  he  has  given  to  thee."  "  If  those," 
said  the  venerable  martyr,  "  who  have  fulfilled  the  will 
"  of  God  are  thus  punished,  what  shall  be  the  fate  of 
"  those  who  have  broken  it  ?  "  The  words  shot  like 
a  viper's  fang  into  the  breast  of  Alcimus.  And  the 
tradition  went  on  to  say  that  he  proceeded  to  destroy 
himself  by  the  accumulation  of  all  manner  of  punish- 
ments provided  by  the  Jewish  law  —  stoning,  burning, 
beheading,  hanging. x  Another  more  authentic  version 
described  him  as  struck  by  palsy  for  having  endeav- 
ored, in  pursuance  of  his  Hellenizing  policy,  to  take 
down  the  partition  which  since  the  Return2  separated 
the  outer  from  the  inner  court  of  the  Temple. 

But  whatever  may  be  the  reconciliation  of  these  con- 
flicting  stories,  which  betray  the  same  lurking  tender- 
ness towards  the  successor  of  Aaron  as  we  have  seen  in 
the  case  of  Menelaus,  Alcimus  still  played  a  conspicu- 
ous part  for  at  least  two  years  before  his  end.  He 
paid  his  homage  to  the  Syrian  Government  by  a  golden 
crown  and  the  branches  of  palm  and  olive  used  in  the 
Temple  processions,  and  represented  that  "  so  long  as 
"  Judas  at  the  head  3  of  '  the  Chasidim,'  or  '  Pious,' 
"  was  left,  it  was  not  possible  that  the  State  should  be 
quiet."  Accordingly  he  was  at  once  invested  with 
the  office  which  it  was  felt  would  carry  weight  into 
the  heart  even  of  the  insurgent  nation.  The  calcula- 
tion was  correct.  The  fanatical  party,  to  whom  every 
Grecianizing  tendency  was  an  abomination,  and  the 
name  of  Alcimus  a  by-word,  yet,  in  their  ex-  Ai:cimu8. 
cessive  tenacity  for  the  letter  above  the  spirit,  B-  c- 162, 
when  they  heard4  that  a  genuine  "  son  of  Aaron"  was 

1  Derenbourg,  54.  8  2  Mace.  xiv.  6. 

2  1    Mace.   ix.    54-56;    Josephus,         4  1  Mace.  vii.  14. 
int.,  xii.   10,   6. 


396  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.      Lect.  XLIX. 

advancing  on  Jerusalem,  could  believe  no  harm  of  him, 
and  placed  themselves  in  his  hands,  to  find  themselves 
miserably  betrayed.  In  the  massacre  which  followed, 
and  in  which  probably  Joseph  the  son  of  Joazar 
perished,  their  contemporaries  seemed  to  see  the  lit- 
eral fulfillment  of  the  words  of  the  seventy-fourth1 
Psalm.  But  Alcimus  succeeded  in  his  ambition.  He 
entered  on  his  office  in  the  Temple,  and  it  was  he 2 
who,  when  Nicanor  had  for  a  moment  been  won  over 
by  the  magnanimity  of  the  Maccabee's  bearing,  fearing 
that  he  might  be  supplanted  by  that  formidable  rival, 
sowed  discord  between  the  two  friends,  and  brought  on 
the  final  struggle,  which  terminated,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  the  destruction  of  both.  For  the  moment,  on  the 
fall  of  Judas,  the  party  of  Alcimus  was  in  the  ascend- 
ant. Bacchides  took  Nicanor's  place.  A  confused 
struggle  ensued.  Jonathan,  the  youngest  of  the  As- 
monean  brothers,  appeared  to  be  marked  out  for  the 
supreme  command  by  the  peculiar  dexterity  which 
gave  him  his  surname  of  "  the  cunning."  There  was 
a  skirmish 3  beyond  the  Jordan  —  a  fray  with  the 
Arabs  —  a,  sudden  inroad  on  the  wedding-party  of  a 
tribe  that  had  carried  off  the  quiet  eldest  brother  John 
—  a  close  encounter  with  Bacchides,  which  Jonathan 
and  his  party  escaped  by  plunging  into  the  Jordan, 
like  the  Gadite 4  warriors  of  old  times.  For  a  time  all 
the  fruits  of  the  victories  of  Judas  seemed  to  be  lost. 
Bacchides  occupied  all  the  JudaBan  fortresses  and  Alci- 
mus reigned  supreme  in  the  Temple.  Jonathan  mean- 
while entrenched  himself  in  the  Pass  of  Michmash,  in 
the  haunts  of  his  illustrious  namesake,  the  friend  of 
David.     The  sudden  death  of  Alcimus,  and  the  disgust 

1  1  Mace.  vii.  17.  3  1  Mace  tx.  85-48. 

a  2  Mace.  xiv.  26.  «  See  Lecture  XXII 


Lect.  xlix.  the  pontificate.  397 

of  Bacchides  at  the  excesses  of  his  party,  finally 
cleared  the  prospect,  and,  after  a  long  and  doubtful 
conflict,  Jonathan  gradually  vindicated  his  claim  to  be 
the  successor  of  his  glorious  brother.  The  rivalry  be- 
tween the  two  claimants  to  the  throne  of  Antioch, 
Alexander  Balas,  the  pretended  son  of  Antiochus,  and 
his  cousin  Demetrius,  gave  to  the  Jewish  chief  the  op- 
portunity of  siding  with  Alexander,  who  in  return 
struck  the  critical  blow  alone  wanting  to  Jonathan's 
success,  by  investing  him  with  the  office  of  High 
Priest,  and  adding  to  it  the  dignity  of  "  the  King's 
"Friend,"  with  a  golden  crown  and  purple  robe  —  the 
mark  of  adoption  into  the  regal  circle. 

It  was  a  decisive  step  in  the  relations  of  the  Syrian 
Government  to  the  Jewish  insurgents,  as  the  first  rec- 
ognition of  their  independence.  But  it  was  a  decisive 
step  also  in  the  internal  history  of  Israel.  It  was  a 
break  in  the  succession  of  the  High  Priests,  such  as 
had  only  taken  place  twice  before,  once  when  Eli, 
from  some  unexplained  cause,  superseded  the  elder 
house  of  Eleazar;  again  when  Zadok  was  placed  by 
Solomon  in  the  place  of  Abiathar.  But  in  the  eleva- 
tion of  Jonathan  to  the  High  Priesthood  the  inter- 
ruption was  more  serious.  Regarded  from  a  purely 
ceremonial  point  of  view,  it  was  a  complete  departure 
from  that  hereditary  descent  which  had  hitherto 
marked  the  whole  previous  series. 

The  last  unquestioned  representative  of  the  un- 
broken line  was  the  murdered  Onias,  and  his  legitimate 
successor, was  the  youth  who  had  fled  to  Egypt.  But 
even  Jason,  Menelaus,1  and  Alcimus,  although  covered 

1  This  is  doubted  by  Herzfeld,  ii.  is  stated  by  Josephus,  Ant.,  xii.  5, 1, 
218.  But  that  Menelaus  was  the  xx.  10,  3  (his  Hebrew  name  being 
brother  of  Onias  III.,  and  of  Jason,     Onias,  ibid.,  and  Hegesippus,  ii.  13). 


398  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.      Lect.  XLIX. 

with  popular  obloquy,  were  yet  all  more  or  less  mem- 
bers of  the  same  sacred  family.  As  such  they  were 
venerated  even  by  those  who  most  abhorred  their 
policy.  The  extinction,  therefore,  of  the  house  of 
Josedek,  whether  with  Onias,  Jason,  or  Alcimus,  was 
regarded  as  the  close  of  "  the  Anointed  Priests "  of 
those  (so  it  would  seem)  who  belonged  to  that  direct 
succession  which  had  shared  in  the  consecrated  oil  of 
the  ancient x  Priesthood. 

Seven  years  had  now  passed,  in  which  the  functions 
of  the  great  office  had  been  altogether  suspended  ;  and 
it  might  have  seemed  as  if  from  excess  of  regard  for 
the  exact  hierarchical  succession,  the  Pontificate  itself 
would  expire.  But  here,  as  in  other  critical  moments 
of  the  Jewish  history,  the  moral  force  of  the  higher 
spirits  of  the  nation  overrode  the  ceremonial  scruples. 
As  in  Russia,  after  the  civil  wars  which  brought  to  an 
end  the  ancient  dynasty  of  Ruric,2  the  nation  chose 
for  their  new  Prince  the  child  of  the  Romanoff  Prelate, 
who  had  with  his  whole  order  suffered  in  the  struggle 
against  the  Polish  oppressors,  so  the  Jewish  people 
could  not  but  turn  to  the  gallant  family  who  had  saved 
them  and  their  faith  from  destruction.  Even  in  the 
lifetime  of  Judas  the  idea  of  investing  him  with  the 
High  Priesthood  had  been  entertained,  though  never 

That   Alcimus   was   the   nephew   of  Herzfeld,    ii.  430)  Jason    (comp.    2 

Menelaus,  according  to  the  Rabbin-  Mace.  i.  10).     So  (in  general  terms) 

ical  tradition,  is  almost  certain  (De-  the  passage  is  interpreted  by  Euse- 

renbourg,  53,  54),  and    both  state-  bius,  //.  E.,  i.  6,  Demons/.  Ev.,  viii. 

ments  are  confirmed  by  1  Mace.  vii.  391:  "It   means   nothing  else   than 

14.     The   natural    tendency   of    the  "the    succession   of   anointed    High 

Jewish  traditions  would  have  been  to  "  Priests  "  (compare  Tertullian  ami 

illegitimatize  these  heretical  Pontiffs  Theodoret).     (See   Rosenmiiller    ad 

1  This   is   one   probable  explana-  loc.) 
'.ion  of  Dan.  ix.  25,  whether  "the         a  Sec    Lectures    on    the    Eastern 

"  Anointed   One  "  be  Onias,  or  (as  Church,  Lecture  X. 


Lect.  XLIX.  JONATHAN.  399 

fulfilled.  And  now  came  the  time  for  its  accomplish- 
ment. To  modern  nations  the  selection  of  a  warlike 
deliverer  for  a  sacred  post,  of  raising  a  Charles  Martel 
to  the  Papacy,  a  Cromwell  to  the  office  of  Moderator,  a 
Gustavus  Vasa  or  a  Wellington  to  the  Primacy,  is  curi- 
ously incongruous.  But  the  Jewish  Priesthood  was  so 
essentially  military  in  its  character,  so  entirely  me- 
chanical *  in  its  functions,  that  there  was  no  shock  to  its 
associations  in  the  same  hand  grasping  the  sword  or 
spear  of  Phinehas  and  the  censer  or  rod  of  Aaron.  The 
Asmonean  family  brought  to  it  more  than  it  The  Pont;_ 
gave  to  them,  a  moral  elevation  and  grandeur,  j^Jt£[n 
which  it  had  long  lost,  and  which,  after  they  B- c- 153- 
had  gone,  it  did  not  retain.  One  indispensable  outward 
qualification  there  was  to  be  and  one  only,  the  nomina- 
tion by  the  Syrian  Government  stepping  as  it  did  into 
the  place  and  authority  formerly  occupied  by  Moses, 
by  Solomon,  and  by  Cyrus.  It  was  for  this  benefit,  no 
less  than  for  his  friendly  relations  generally,  that  the 
name  of  Alexander  Balas  was  so  studiously  cherished 
by  the  Jewish  Annals.  For  this  they  ignore  his  doubt- 
ful birth,  his  questionable  surname ;  they  rejoice  in 
his  wedding  festivity;  they  describe  with  pride  how 
their  own  chief  sat  by  him  in  purple  and  ruled  as  a 
Syrian  officer  over  the  troops  and  over  a  district2  in 
the  south  of  Palestine,  how  he  received  from  the  king 
a  golden  brooch,  and  the  appanage  of  Ekron. 

'The  entrance  of  Jonathan  on  the  Pontificate  was 
conducted  with  due  solemnity.  It  was  on  the  joyous 
Festival  of  the  Tabernacles,  so  often  chosen  for  in- 
augurations of  this  kind,  that  Jonathan  dressed  himself 
'n  the  consecrated  clothes,  surmounting  the  blue  tur- 

1  See  Lecture  XXXVI.  ter  word  only  occurs  again  in  Jose- 

*  arparriyhv  Kal  fiepiipxw-     The  lat-      phus,  Ant.,  xii.  5,  5. 


400  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

ban  with  the  golden  *  crown  which  he  wore  as  "  the 
"King's  Friend,"  and  at  the  same  time  (it  is  characteris- 
tically added)  collected  his  forces  and  his  arms.  From 
this  time  the  union  of  the  sacerdotal  and  the  political 
supremacy  was  completed,  and  the  language  in  which 
that  union  is  described  in  the  110th  Psalm  is  more  ex- 
actly applicable  to  the  Pontificate  of  the  Asmonean 
warriors  than  to  any  period  since  the  age  of  David. 
The  military  career  of  Jonathan  himself  was  not  for  a 
moment  interrupted.  He  fortified  the  Temple  mount 
afresh  "  with  square  stones,"  intending,  apparently,  in 
despair  of  removing  the  Syrian  fortress,  to  make  it  a 
completely  separate  town,  erecting  a  large  mound  on 
the  side  towards  the  fort,  and  repairing  the  ruinous 
parts  of  the  wall  overhanging  the  Kedron.2  He  ac- 
cepted the  challenge  of  the  general  of  the  rival  Syrian 
king  Demetrius  into  the  Philistine  plain,  "where  there 
"was  neither  stone  nor  pebble  nor  place  to  flee  unto,"3 
beat  back  with  his  archers  the  cavalry  on  which  the 
Syrians  relied,  secured  Joppa  and  Askalon,  and  burned 
the  old  sanctuary  of  the  Philistine  Dagon  at  Ashdod. 
The  temple  was  left  in  ruins,  and  the  scorched  corpses 
of  those  who  perished  in  it  lay  all  around.  The  suc- 
cession first  of  Demetrius  to  the  throne,  then  of  the 
son  of  Alexander  Balas,  made  no  difference  in  Jona- 
than's position.  From  each  he  received  the  confirma- 
tion of  the  government  to  his  sacerdotal  office,  and  the 
annexation  of  the  three  outposts  of  Apherema,  Rama- 
thaim,  and  Lydda  from  the  borders  of  Samaria.  Less 
attractive  than  his  brother  Judas,  worthy  of  his  name 

i  1  Mace.  x.  21,  22.  Shefela,    1  Mace.  x.  73.     Compare, 

2  1  Mace.  xii.  37,  38.    Caphcnatha  for  the  contest  of  the   Syrian  cav- 

s  only  mentioned  here.  airy  and   the   Israelite  infantry   oe 

8  An  excellent  description  of  the  the  plains,  1  Kings  xx.  25. 


Lect.  XLIX.  SIMON.  401 

"  the  crafty,"  he  went  on  balancing  the  various  pre- 
tenders against  each  other,  till  at  last  he  was  caught 
by  the  Syrian  general  Tryphon,  carried  off  in  a  deep 
snowstorm,  and  killed  in  an  obscure  village  beyond  the 
Jordan.1 

One  still  remained  of  the  gallant  five — he  whom 
Mattathias  on  his  deathbed  had  designated  Simon. 
alike  by  his  superior  wisdom  and  his  age  B' c' 143' 
(next  to  the  retiring  John  he  was  the  eldest)  "  as  the 
father  of  them  all."  He  rose  at  once  to  the  occasion. 
His  appeal  to  his  countrymen  and  their  response  are 
indeed  the  models  of  the  generous  spirit  which  can 
alone  fill  the  vacancy  caused  by  "  a  lost  leader." 
"  When  Simon  saw  that  the  people  was  in  great  trem- 
"  bling  and  fear,  he  went  up  to  Jerusalem,  and  gathered 
"  the  people  together ;  and  gave  them  exhortation, 
"  saying,  '  Ye  yourselves  know  what  great  things  I, 
" '  and  my  brethren,  and  my  father's  house,  have  clone 
"  'for  the  laws  and  the  sanctuary,  the  battles  also  and 
" '  troubles  which  we  have  seen,  by  reason  whereof  all 
"  (  my  brethren  are  slain  for  Israel's  sake,  and  I  am  left 
" '  alone.  Now  therefore  be  it  far  from  me,  that  I 
"  '  should  spare  mine  own  life  in  any  time  of  trouble  : 
"  '  for  I  am  no  better  than  my  brethren.  Doubtless  I 
" '  will  avenge  my  nation,  and  the  sanctuary,  and  our 
" '  wives,  and  our  children  :  for  all  the  heathen  are 
"  '  gathered  to  destroy  us  of  very  malice.'  Now  as 
"  soon  as  the  people  heard  these  words,  their  spirits  re- 
"vived.  And  they  answered  with  a  loud  voice,  say- 
i;ing,  'Thou  shalt  be  our  leader  instead  of  Judas  and 
< '  Jonathan  thy  brother.  Fight  thou  our  battles  and 
^'whatsoever  thou  commandest  us,  that  will  we  do.'  "3 
His  name  of  itself  struck  terror  into  the  Syrian  army. 

1  1  Mace.  xi.  34.  2  1  Mace.  xiii.  2-9. 

51 


402  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lf.ct.   XLIX. 

His  first  act  was  to  recover  his  brother's  bones,  to 
Monument  i^er  them  in  the  ancestral  cavern  at  Modin. 
at  Modin.  Qn  ^jiat  r[ftge  overlooking  the  Philistine  plain, 
the  scene  of  so  many  of  their  glorious  deeds,  and  visi- 
ble from  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  beyond  which,  alone 
of  the  rulers  of  Israel,  they  had  ventured  to  seek  for 
allies  from  the  western  world,  Simon,  with  the  con- 
sciousness that  he  was  the  last  of  a  family  of  heroes, 
built  a  monument,  in  that  mixed  Grseco-Egyptian  style 
which  is  to  be  seen  at  Petra,  in  the  valley  of  the 
Kedron,  and  on  the  Appian  Way.  It  was  a  square 
structure,  surrounded  by  colonnades  of  monolith  pillars, 
of  which  the  front  and  back  were  of  white  polished 
stone.  Seven  pyramids  were  erected  by  Simon  on  the 
summit  for  the  father  and  mother  and  the  four  brothers 
who  now  lay  there,  with  the  seventh  for  himself1  when 
his  time  should  come.  On  the  faces  of  the  monument 
were  bas-reliefs,  representing  the  accoutrements  of 
sword  and  spear  and  shield,  "  for  an  eternal  memorial  " 
of  their  many  battles.  There  were  also  the  sculptures 
of  "  ships  "  — no  doubt  to  record  their  interest  in  that 
long  seaboard  of  the  Philistine  coast,  which  they  were 
the  first  to  use  for  their  country's  good.  A  monument 
at  once  so  Jewish  in  idea,  so  Gentile  in  execution,  was 
worthy  of  the  combination  of  patriotic  fervor  and  phil- 
osophic enlargement  of  soul  which  raised  the  Macca- 
bsean  heroes  so  high  above  their  age. 

The  monument  remained  in  all  its  completeness  till 
the  first  century,  and  in  sufficient  distinctness  till  the 
fourth  century  of  the  Christian  era.  Then  all  trace 
of  its  existence  and  even  of  the  name  of  the  place 
disappeared,  and  it  is  only  within  the  last  three  years 
that  the  joint  labors  of  Polish,  French,  and  English 

1  1  Mace.  xiii.  27;  Joseplius,  Ant.,  xiii.  6,  1.. 


Lect.  XLIX.  SIMON.  403 

explorers  have  discovered  "  Modin  "  in  the  village  of 
Meclieh,  and,  possibly,  the  tomb  of  the  Maccabees  in 
the  remains  of  large  sepulchral1  vaults  and  broken 
columns  m  its  neighborhood,  corresponding  in  general 
situation  and,  as  far  as  the  few  traces  left  can  indicate, 
in  detail,  with  the  only  tomb  in  the  existing  remains 
of  Palestine  (except  the  patriarchal  sepulchre  at 
Machpelah)  which  can  be  clearly  identified. 

But  Simon  was  to  raise  a  nobler  monument  to  the 
memory  of  his  brethren  than  the  sepulchre  of  Conquest  of 

^  A .  the  Syrian 

Modin.  Far  advanced  as  he  was  m  years,  fortresses. 
three  crowning  achievements  fell  to  his  lot  which 
neither  of  his  more  stirring  brothers  had  been  able  to 
accomplish.  There  were  three  strongholds  of  the 
Syrian  party,  which,  after  all  the  successes  of  Judas 
and  Jonathan,  had  remained  in  their  hands.  One  was 
Gezer,2  the  ancient  Canaanite  fortress  in  the  south- 
western plain,  which  after  long  vicissitudes  had  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  Israelites,  and  now  again  in  these 
later  days  had  become  the  chief  garrison  of  the  Sy- 
rians in  the  thoroughfare  of  Philistia.  This  was  at- 
tacked with  the  newly  invented3  Macedonian  engine 
of  war,  and  the  terrified  inhabitants  surrendered  at  dis- 
cretion ;  the  images  in  the  Temples  were  cleared  out, 
and  a  colony  of  Jews  was  established  there  under 
Simon's  son  John,  now  for  the  first  time  winning  his 
renown. 

1  Mr.  Sandrecsky  and  Mr.  Con-  53,  xii.  34,  xv.  28,  35  (see  Ewald,  v. 
der  (Palestine  Exploration  Fund,  335).  Gezer  was  discovered  in  1873 
1873,  93),  M.  Forner  and  M.  Guerin  at  Tell  el-Jezer,  six  miles  S.  S.  E.  of 
(Description  de  la  Palestine,  i.  403).  Ramlck,  by  M.  Clermont- Ganneau. 

2  In  1  Mace.  xiii.  43.  Gaza  is  a  3  1  Mace.  xiii.  43,  "Helepolis," 
tuisreailino-  for  Gazara,  which  is  pre-  invented  by  Demetrius  Poliorcetes 
-erved  in  Josephus,  B.J.,  i.   2,  2;  (Plutarch,  Demetr.,  c.  21). 

4.nt.,  xiii.  6,  7.     Comp.  1  Mace.  xiii. 


404  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lkct.  XLIX. 

The  second  outpost  was  the  oftentimes  taken  and 
retaken  rock-fortress  on  the  road  to  Hebron,  Bethzur. 
This,  whether  captured  by  Simon  at  this  or  at  some 
earlier  period,  was  now  for  the  first  time  secured  and 
garrisoned  1  with  Jews,  and  the  day  of  its  occupation, 
the  17th  of  Sivan  (May -June),  was  celebrated  as  a 
festival.2 

But  the  decisive  victory  was  the  expulsion  of  the 
Syrian  occupants — "the  sons  of  Acra,"  as  they 
were  called  —  from  the  citadel  that  had  so 
long  overlooked  the  sanctuary.  It  had  been,  as  the 
historian  calls  it,  the  incarnate  Enemy,3  the  Satan  of 
Jerusalem.  Now  at  last  its  doom  was  come.  The  day 
was  long  cherished,4  the  23d  of  Iyar  (April-May), 
when  Simon  entered  it  with  waving  of  palm-branches, 
with  harps  and  cymbals,  with  hymns  and  odes.  Ac- 
cording to  one  account  he  went  so  far  in  his  indigna- 
tion as  not  only  to  dismantle  the  fortress,  but  to  level 
the  very  hill  on  which  it  stood,  so  that  it  should  no 
longer  overlook  the  Temple.  It  was  agreed  (so  ran 
the  story)  in  solemn  assembly  that  the  inanimate 
mountain  should  thus,  as  it  were,  be  decapitated  for  its 
insolence,  and,  by  working  night  and  day  for  three 
years,  the  summit  of  the  hill  was  cleared  away,  so  as 
to  reduce  it  from  a  towering  peak  to  a  level 5  surface. 

1  1  Mace.  xiv.  33.  the  statement  with  the  total  silence 

2  Derenbourg,  G8.  of  1  Mace.  xiii.  51-53,  and  also  with 
8  1  Mace.  xiii.  51.  the  actual  features  of  the  ground.  It 
*  1   Mace.  xiii.   51.  Derenbourg,     is   possible,   however,   that   (as  was 

67.  implied  in  the  passage  itself)  what 

6  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  6,  7.     That  was  actually  done  was  ao1  t<>  change 

ibis  story  of  Josephus  relates  to  the  the  relative  altitudes  of  the  citadel 

\iill  of  the  citadel  of  David,  and  not  and  the  temple,  but  to  reduce   the 

to    "the    Lower    Hill,"    afterwards  rock  of  the  citadel  so  considerably 

called  Acra,  is  evident  from  the  con-  as  to  deprive  it  of  that  insulting  and 

iext.     But  it  is  diflieult  to  reconcile  menacing  altitude  which  it  once  woro. 


lect.  XLIX.  SIMON.  405 

But  these  military  achievements  are  not  the  main 
grounds  of  Simon's  fame.  If  Judas  was  the  David  of 
the  Asmonean  race,  and  Jonathan  its  Joab,  Simon  was 
its  Solomon,  the  restorer  of  peace  and  liberty.  In 
many  forms  this  change  is  marked.  From  his  acces- 
sion a  new  era  was  dated,  the  first  year  of  independ- 
pnce,  when  the  nation  ceased  to  pay  the  tribute  which 
from  the  Persian  kings  downwards  they  had  paid  to 
each  successive  conquering  dynasty.  Henceforward 
the  Jewish  contracts  were  dated  "  In  the  first  year  of 
"  Simon,  the  great  High  Priest,  and  General,  and 
"  Leader  of  the  Jews." 

Concurrently  with  this  came  the  natural  sign  of  na- 
tionality, never  before  claimed,  of  striking  Sovereignty 
coins  for  themselves.  This  privilege  was  for-  b.  c.  141. 
mally  granted  by  Antiochus  VII.,  and,  though  there 
may  be  a  few  instances  of  such  coinage  before  the 
actual  permission  was  given,  it  is  from  this,  the  fourth, 
year  of  Simon's  reign  that  the  coins  have  unmistak- 
ably his  name  and  superscription.  The  devices  which 
appear  on  them  are  all  indications  of  the  peace 1  and 
plenty  which  he  had  ushered  in  —  the  cup,  the  vine, 
the  palm-branches,  the  lily,  the  fruit-boughs  of  Pales- 
tine. The  vine  and  the  lily  in  sculptured  emblem  or 
in  familiar  phrase  have  since  his  time  remained  the 
heritage  of  his  people.  The  prosaic  historian  of  fifty 
years  later  warms  almost  into  poetry  as  he  describes 
how  "  the  land  was  at  rest  all  the  clays  of  Simon ;  " 
now,  following  the  wider  views  of  his  illustrious  brother, 
and  thus  exemplifying  the  devices  which  he  had  carved 
m  the  family  monument  at  Moclin,  he  had  turned 
Joppa  into  a  port  for  the  ships  of  the  Mediterranean ; 
how  after  the  conquest  of  the  three  hated  fortresses, 

1  Madden's  Jewish  Coins,  39-50. 


406  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

the  neglected  agriculture  and  fruitage  burst  into  new 
life ;  how  "  the  old  men  sat  in  the  squares  of  the  cities 
"  communing  of  good  things,  and  the  young  men  put 
"  on  their  glorious  apparel  and  their  military  man- 
"  ties," 1  the  accoutrements  in  which  they  had  won 
their  country's  freedom  ;  how,  as  in  the  ancient  days, 
"  each  man  sat  under  the  vine  "  which  overspread  his 
own  house,  and  "  the  fig-tree "  in  his  own  garden ; 
how,  all  works  of  humanity  and  piety  prospered  under 
his  hand  —  the  provisioning  and  fortification  of  the 
towns,  the  study  of  the  Law,  the  purification  of  the 
Temple.  And  it  is  not  without  a  deep  historical  in- 
terest that  we  perceive  the  gradual  intertwining  of  the 
destinies  of  the  Jewish  people,  through  this  increase 
of  fame  and  dominion,  with  the  sway  of  that  over- 
weening power  which  Judas  was  the  first  to  invoke, 
and  which  ultimately  was  to  take  the  place  of  the 
foreign  oppressors  from  whom  they  fancied  that  they 
had  been  forever  freed.  Two  messages  came  to  Simon 
of  unequal  value.  One,  if  so  be,  was  from  the  shadow 
of  the  Spartan  State,  whose  intercourse  with  Judaea 
is  so  difficult  to  understand.  But  the  other  came 
from  Rome,  and  to  Rome  once  more  ambassadors  were 
sent  with  a  golden  shield  fall  of  gifts,  and  the  treaty 
engraven  on  tablets  of  brass;  and  the  Syrian  king 
Demetrius,  overawed  by  the  spectacle  of  that  great 
alliance,  gave  to  the  High  Priesthood  of  Simon  that 
ratification  which  was  needed  for  the  regularity  of  the 
succession,  together  with  the  title  of  "  the '  King's 
"•  Friend."  His  princely  state,  with  his  display  of  gold 
and  silver  plate,  awed2  the  envoy  even  of  the  Kings 

1  56%as  —  (TToXas,  the  usual  phrases         2  1  Mace.  xv.  32. 
lor  military  dress.     See  Grimm,  on 
I  Mace.  xiv.  10. 


Lect.  XL1X.  SIMON.  107 

of  Syria.  His  own  countrymen  were  convoked  to 
ratify  the  decision  of  the  Syrian  Government.  "  In 
the  fore-court1  of  "the  people  of  God  "  (as  it  was 
solemnly  called  in  the  Hebrew  tongue),  in  the  18th 
of  the  month  of  Elul  (May),  a  document  was  drawn 
up  and  engraved  on  brazen  tablets,  and  placed  in  the 
treasury  of  the  Temple,  commemorating  the  noble 
deeds  of  himself  and  his  brother  Jonathan,,  and  recog- 
nizing him  as  their  prince  and  leader,  and,  in  the 
splendid  hyperbole  of  the  ancient  Psalm,  granting  to 
him  his  office,  not  merely  as  a  transient  personal  honor, 
but  to  be  hereditary  in  his  own  family,  held  as  though 
it  was  "a  High  Priesthood  forever."  And  then,  with  a 
sudden  consciousness  of  having,  perhaps,  been  too  bold, 
the  historian  adds  the  characteristic  contradiction  and 
reserve  —  not  without  a  sense  of  the  rude  shock  which 
Simon's  elevation  gave  to  the  stricter  notions  of  legit- 
imate succession  —  "  until  a  faithful  Prophet 2  should 
"  arise,"  like  Jeremiah  or  Elijah,  who  should  read 
ario-ht  the  secrets  and  the  difficulties  of  their  situation. 
It  is  the  reserve  and  contradiction  which  in  times  of 
transition  is  the  mark,  not  only  of  noble  faith,  but  of 
homely  common  sense,  and  of  far-sighted  wisdom. 

The  close  of  Simon's  life  was  hardly  in  keeping  with 
his  lono- and  honorable  career.    He  and  his  two 

o  b.  c.  135. 

younger  sons  were  entrapped  by  his  son-in-law 
into  a  drunken  supper  at  the  fortress  of  Dok,  near  Je- 
richo, and  there  treacherously  murdered. 

Thus  died  the  last  of  the  five  brothers.  His  aged 
ivife  was  with  him  —  a  high  spirited  woman,  of  whose 
early  life  strange  adventures  were  recounted  in  after 
lays.  When  the  most  energetic  of  his  sons,  John,  hast- 
ened to  avenge  the  murder,  the  brutal  assassin  placed 

1   3  Mace.  xiv.  28  (Ewald,  v.  338).         2  1  Mace.  xiv.  41. 


408  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

the  venerable  lady  on  the  walls  of  the  fortress  and 
scourged  her  with  rods  before  the  eyes  of  her  son  to 
induce  him  to  retire.  She,  with  a  courage  worthy  of 
the  house  into  which  she  had  married,  entreated  him  to 
disregard  her  tortures.  But  he  could  not  endure  the 
sight,  and  raised  the  blockade.  The  delay  threw  the 
besiegers  into  the  Sabbatical  year.  The  murderer  com- 
pleted his  crime  by  the  execution  of  the  mother  and 
her  two  sons,  and  escaped  to  a  friend,  a  Greek  adven- 
turer who  had  gained  possession  of  the  Transjordanic 
Philadelphia. 

With  the  death  of  Simon  the  purest  glory  of  the 
Maccabsean  period  ended.  Yet  it  was  not  before  he 
had  finally  established  on  the  throne  the  only  dynasty 
that  has  reigned  over  the  undivided  Jewish  people,  ex- 
cept the  house  of  David.  From  that  house  the  national 
expectations  had  in  earlier  days  long  hoped  for  a  king. 
But  when  the  Monarchy  revived  it  was  not  in  the  house 
of  Jesse,  but  of  Asmon,  not  in  the  tribe  of  Juclah,  but 
of  Levi. 

John,  the  survivor  of  the  tragedy  at  Dok,  was  the 

John  one  whom  his  father  had  long  before  appointed 

b.c.  135.'    as  commander  of  the  Jewish  forces  at  Gaza; 

and  to  him  and  his  brother  had  been  addressed  those 

striking  words  which  well   express  the  feelings  of  the 

^lder  generation  to  that  which  is  to  take  its  place  :    "  I, 

'  and  my l  brethren,  and  my  father's  house,  have  ever, 

'  from  our  youth  unto  this  day,  fought  against  the  ene- 

>'  mies  of  Israel ;   and  things  have  prospered  so  well  in 

"  our  hands  that  we  have  delivered  Israel  oftentimes. 

"  But  now  I  am  old,  and  ye,  by  God's  mercy,  are  of  a 

'  sufficient  age;   be  ye  instead  of  me  and  my  brother, 

"  and  go  and  fight  for  our  nation,  and  the  help  from 

'  Heaven  be  with  you !  " 

1  1  Mace.  xvi.  2,  8. 


Lect.  xlix.  joiin  hyrcanus.  409 

First  of  the  Asmonean  family,  John  bore  a  Gentile 
name,  "Hyrcanus,"  —  whether  as  the  Greek1  form 
corresponding  to  Johanan,  or  from  some2  incident  in 
his  own  life ;  and  his  reign  was  more  like  that  of  a  Sy- 
rian than  a  Jewish  prince.  The  records  of  it  were  pre- 
served in  the  archives  of  the  Priestly  house,  but  are 
lost ;  and  we  are  left  to  gather  their  contents  from  the 
brief  narrative  of  Josephus.  In  Jerusalem  he  occupied 
and  rebuilt  the  fortress 3  at  the  north-east  corner  of  the 
Temple,  once  the  site  of  the  residence  of  the  Persian, 
afterwards  of  the  Roman,  now  of  the  Turkish,  Gov- 
ernor. There,  like  the  Regalia  in  the  Tower,  were  de- 
posited the  pontifical  robes  which  literally  invested 
their  possessor  with  the  office. 

Like  his  father  and  uncle,  John  was  fortunate  in 
finding  a  friend  in  the  Syrian  king,  Antiochus  Sidetes, 
to  whom  the  Jews  gave  in  consequence  the  name  of 
Eusebius  or  the  Pious,  and  from  him  received  the  full 
confirmation  in  his  office.  Two  deadly  enemies  were 
crushed  by  his  arms.  The  hated  race  of  Esau  were 
subdued  and  incorporated  into  the  Jewish  nation  by 
circumcision.  The  Arab  tribe  of  the  Nabathaeans, 
which  had  long  been  friendly  to  the  Asmonean  family 
and  had  occupied  the  ancient  territory  of  the  Edomites, 
doubtless  assisted;  and  the  proud  Esau  at  last  bowed 
his  neck  to  the  persevering  Israel  —  only,  however,  to 
exercise  once  more  a  new  and  startling  influence.  An- 
other cherished  victory  was  that  in  which  he  razed  to 
the  ground  the  rival  Temple  on  Mount  Gerizim  and 
totally    destroyed   the    Greek   city   of    Samaria,    from 

1  So  Herzfeld,  arguing  from  the  Chron.,  ii.  379).     Sulpicius    Sever., 

earlier  John  Hyrcanus.  H.E.,  ii.  26  (Madden's  Jewish  Coins, 

9  The  killing  of  a  Greek  named  51). 

HjTcanus    (5    Mace.    xx.    1-3),    or  8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xviii.  4,  3. 
\a  expedition  into  Hyrcania  (Eus. 
52 


410  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

which  the  Samaritans  had  migrated  to  Shechem  in  the 
time  of  Alexander.1  It  became  henceforth  known  as 
the  "  City  of  Graves."  2 

For  thirty-one  years  he  carried  on  the  vigor  of  his 
father's  government,  and  combined  with  it  a  spark  of 
that  gift  which  was  believed  to  have  ceased  with  Mal- 
achi.  He  was,  says  Josephus,  not  only  the  Chief 
Ruler  and  the  Chief  Priest,3  but  a  Prophet.  The  in- 
timations of  his  possessing  this  gift  were,  indeed,  but 
slight,  and  exhibit  almost  the  first  example  of  the  deg- 
radation of  the  word  from  its  ancient  high,  meaning  to 
that  of  mere  prediction.  Once  from  the  Holy  of  Holies 
he  heard  a  voice  announcing  the  victory  of  his  sons 
over 4  the  Samaritans  on  the  day  and  hour  that  it  oc- 
curred. Another  time  he5  foresaw  in  a  dream  the  for- 
tunes of  the  three  brothers  who  were  to  succeed  him. 
It  is  useless  to  revive  the  narrative  of  the  tissue  of 
intrigues  and  crimes  which  convert  the  Palace  of  the 
Royal  Pontificate  into  the  likeness  of  an  Oriental 
Court.  So  completely  had  the  Hellenizing  customs 
penetrated  into  the  heart  of  the  Asmonean  family  that 
the  three  sons  of  Hyrcanus,  Judas,6  Mattathias,  and 
Aristobuius.  Jonathan,  were  respectively  known  as  Aris- 
b.c.  107.  tobulus,  Antigonus,  and  Alexander  Jannseus. 
Of  these  the  eldest,  Aristobuius,  had  gained  the  char- 
acter of  "  the  Philhellen,"  or  "  Lover  of  the  Greeks," 
and  won  the  admiration  of  Gentile 1  writers  by  his  mod- 
eration towards  them,  and  by  the  energy  with  which, 
as  his  father  had  incorporated  the  Edomites  on  the 
south,  so   he    conquered   and   absorbed  the  Intursean 

l  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  9,  1;  10,  2;  6  Ibid. 

B.  /.  i.  2,  6.  6  Josephus,  Ant.,  xx.  10,  1. 

-  Gr'atz,  60.  7  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  11,3.    Such 

8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  10,  7.  was  the  opinion  of  Timagenes  the 

*  Derenbour^,  74.  Syrian,  as  quoted  by  Strabo. 


Lect.  XLIX.  ALEXANDER  JANNJEUS.  411 

borderers  on  the  north.  But  that  for  which  he  was 
chiefly  remembered  was  that  he  was  the  first  of  his 
family  to  assume  the  regal  title  and  diadem.  Once 
more  there  was  a  "King1  in  Israel,"  but  bearing  the 
name  unknown  before,  and  to  acquire  before  long  a 
solemn  significance  — "  King  of  the  Jews."  It  was 
still,  however,  as  High  Priest  that  he  reigned.  And  it 
was  not  till  his  brother 2  Jonathan  mounted  the  throne 
under  the  name  of  Alexander  that  the  coins  Alexander 

T  .  Jannams. 

alternately  bear  the  names  or  Jonathan  the  «•  c.  ioe. 
High  Priest  (or,  more  rarely,  the  King)  in  Hebrew, 
and  Alexander  the  King  in  Greek.  In  common  par- 
lance he  was  known  by  the  two  names  combined,  Alex- 
ander Jannseus.  It  is  enough  to  indicate  the  general 
results  of  his  long,  troubled,  and  adventurous  reign. 
On  the  whole,  in  its  external  relations,  it  carried  on  the 
successes  of  his  predecessors.  With  the  exception  of 
Ptolemais,  which  remained  Greek,  he  annexed  all  the 
maritime  or  quasi-maritime  towns3  along  the  western 
coast,  from  the  Bay  of  Accho  to  Gaza.  An  anchor  on 
his  coins  is,  perhaps,  the  commemoration  of  this  im- 
portant accession.  With  the  exception  of  Pella  —  the 
Macedonian  settlement  which,  on  refusing  to  adopt  the 
Jewish  rite,  was  destroyed  —  most  of  the  Transjordanic 
settlements,  whether  Greek  or  Arab,  followed  the  fate 
of  Idumaea  under  his  father,  and  of  Iturgea  under  his 
brother. 

In  one  of  these  obscure  campaigns  Alexander  died, 
and  to  him   succeeded  —  for  the  first  time  in  Aiesandra. 
Jewish   history  —  a    Queen,    his   widow  Alex-  B- c- 79- 
imdra  or  Salome  ;   possibly,  the  widow  of  his  brother 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  11,  1.  of  Mattathias,   as   those  of   Aristo- 

2  Madden,    G2,   68  ;   Derenbourg,     bulus  to  Judas.     . 

35.     These   coins  have   been   erro-        3  Josephus,  Anl.,  xiii.  15,  4. 
leously  assigned   to   Jonathan,  son 


412  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Leci.  XLIX. 

Aristobulus;  the  mother  of  two  sons,  the  last  independ- 
ent Princes  of  the  Asmonean  dynasty. 

It  was  one  of  the  results  of  the  peculiar  warfare  of 
the  Asmonean  Princes  that  Palestine  gradually  became 
studded  with  fortresses  or  castles  apart  from  the  main 
seats  of  their  ancient  history  and  civilization,  and  com- 
manding the  passes  in  which  they  entrenched  them- 
selves against  their  enemies.  Such  had  been  Moclin 
under  Mattathias  and  Judas,  and  Masada 1  under  Jona- 
than ;  such  was  Hyrcaneum  under  John  Hyrcanus ; 
such,  under  Alexander  Jannseus,  was  MachaBrus2  beyond 
the  Dead  Sea,  and  Alexandreum  on  the  mountains  be- 
tween Samaria  and  the  Jordan  valley,  which  subse- 
quently became  the  recognized  burial-place  of  the  later 
Princes  of  the  Asmonean  family,  as  Modin  had  been  of 
the  first  earlier.  But  Hyrcanus 3  and  Alexander  were 
interred,  in  regal  or  pontifical  state,  in  tombs  which 
lonir  bore  their  names  close  to  the  walls  of  Jerusalem.4 

This  was  the  external  course  of  the  Royal  Pontificate 
of  Judaea  —  a  period  of  nearly  a  century  of  mingled 
war  and  peace,  but  on  the  whole  of  independence  and 
fame.  It  gave  to  the  Roman  writers  their  first  idea  of 
the  Jewish  State  as  of  the  union  of  the  regal  and 
priestly  office,  supposed  by  them,  through  a  natural 
error,  to  be  a  long  ancestral  usage.  Like  the  ancient 
monarchy  of  David  and  Solomon,  its  success,  at  least 
under  the  reign  of  Simon,  was  sufficient  to  justify  the 
deep  impression  which  it  left  on  the  Gentile  world  of 
a  more  serious  view  of  religion  and  a  more  sacred  view 
if  government,  than  elsewhere  had  come  within  their 

1  Josephu.s,  B.  J.,  rii.  8,  8.  and  Alexandreum  are  unknown;  but 

2  Ibid.  vii.  G,  2.  they  are  possibly  tbe  "  Royal  forts," 
8  [bid.  vi.  2,  10.  "  Tur  Malka"  — "Har  Malcha  " 
*  The  precise  sites  of  Hyrcaneum  of  later  days.     Gratz,  47,  127 


Lect    XLIX.  THE   BOOK  OF  JUDITH.  413 

experience.1  On  the  other  hand,  as  in  the  earlier  pe- 
riod, so  now,  the  cynical  or  sagacious  eye  of  Tacitus 
saw  beneath  this  outward  form  the  darker  shades  of 
"  revolutions,2  banishments,  massacres,  murders  —  fra- 
"  tricidal,  parricidal,  conjugal." 

It  will  be  the  object  of  the  remainder  of  this  Lecture 
to  penetrate  into  the  interior  of  the  Jewish  life  of  this 
period,  and  bring  out  whatever  instruction  or  interest 
it  may  yield  of  more  than  temporary  value. 

I.  There  are  still  heard  in  Palestine  some  echoes  of 
the  sacred  voices  of  the  past.  Not  only  was  Literatureof 
the  First  Book  of  Maccabees,  with  all  its  stir- the  period- 
ring  scenes,  compiled  immediately  before  or  after  the 
close  of  the  reign  of  Hyrcanus,  from  the  records  kept 
in  the  Pontifical3  registry,  and  about  the  same  time 
the  larger  work  of  Jason  of  Cyrene,  from  which  the 
Second  Book  of  the  Maccabees  —  probably  half  a  cen- 
tury later — drew  its  materials;  but  the  more  hortatory 
and  apocalyptic  style,  of  which  the  Book  of  Daniel, 
whether  in  its  narrative  or  its  visions,  is  the  great  ex- 
ample, was  continued,  though  in  a  less  stately  and  im- 
pressive form,  in  the  romantic  tale  of  Judith  and  the 
prophecies  of  the  Book  of  Enoch.  The  Book  The  Book  o{ 
of  Judith  is  so  filled  with  chronological  in  con-  Judith' 
sistencies  as  to  render  it  difficult  to  fix  either  the  date 
of  its  authorship  or  of  the  events  which  it  professes  to 
record.  But  by  its  taking  for  the  title  of  the  enemy 
of  Israel  the  name  of  a  well-known  Syrian  general, 
Holophernes4  or  Orrophernes,  we  may  infer  that  it  was 

1  Justin,    xxxvi.    2.     "  Hie    mos  was  not  aware  that  the  title  of  king 

apud  Judseos  fuit,  ut  eosdem  reges  had  been  assumed, 

et  sacerdotes  haberent  quorum  jus-  2  Tac.,  Hist.,  v.  8. 

titia  religione    permixta  incredibile  8  1  Mace.  xvi.  24.    Ewald,  v.  463, 

quantum  coaluere."    Similar  remarks  4  A  general  of  Demetrius  I.  Polyb. 

Hjcur  in  Diod.  Sic,  xl.  1,  though  he  xxxiii.  12.    Diod.,  Eclog.,  xxxi.   Jus- 


414  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.      Lect.  XLIX. 

3omposed  under  the  Asmonean  dynasty  —  whether  in 
the  time  of  Jonathan  or  of  Alexander  Jannoeus  is  im- 
material. It  is  a  romance  intended  to  inspire  the 
Israelite  maidens  with  a  sense  of  their  duty  in  case  of 
a  new  foreign  invasion ;  even  as  in  our  own  days  an 
imaginary  battle  in  the  hills  of  Surrey  was  intended  to 
delineate  in  the  possible  future  the  needs  of  England 
under  like  circumstances.  It  is  the  story  of  Jael  re- 
enacted  in  the  midst  of  the  pomp  and  luxury  of  Persia 
or  of  Syria,  instead  of  the  patriarchal  simplicity  of  the 
Kenite  and  the  Canaanite.  The  ancient  battle-field  of 
Esdraelon,  with  the  approaches  through  the  mountain- 
ous passes  from  the  south,  is  fitly  chosen  as  the  scene, 
and  if  Bethulia  itself  cannot  be  identified,  this  is,  per- 
haps, intended  to  stamp  on  the  narrative  its  obviously 
fictitious  character.  It  is  the  one  book  whose  admis- 
sion into  the  Canon  was  by  Jerome1  ascribed  to  the 
Council  of  Nicrea.  This  probably  is  an  error.  But  it 
was  unquestionably  received  amongst  the  sacred  rec- 
ords of  the  ancient  Church  by  Clement  of  Rome,  and 
afterwards  by  Origen.  In  later  times  it  inspired  the 
splendid  picture  of  Christopher  Allori,  and  has  the 
more  questionable  fame  of  having  been  said  to  have 
nerved  the  hand  of  Charlotte  Corday  2  against  Marat, 
and  even  in  our  own  day  to  have  been  used  in  Roman 
pulpits  to  instigate  the  destruction  of  the  King  of  Italy. 
It  was  the  last  direct  expression  of  the  fierce  spirit  of 
the  older  Judaism.  It  is  the  first  unquestionable  ex- 
ample of  a  religious  romance. 

More  complex  is  the  history  of  the  Book  of  Enoch. 
A  book  of  which  the  original   language  is  unknown, 

tin,  xxxv.;  iElian,  Var.  Hist.,  ii.  41  2  Lamartinc's  Girondins,  Book  xliv, 
'Ewald,  v.  476).  c.  14. 

1  Epist.,  iii. 


Lect.  XLIX.  THE  BOOK  OF  ENOCH.  415 

which  dropped  out  of  the  sight  of  the  Jewish  Church 
almost  as  soon  as  written,  but  which  yet  early  attracted 
the  notice  of  the  Christian  Church  ;  quoted  as  a  sacred 
composition  by  the  Apostolic  writers,  eagerly  accepted 
by  Tertullian,  not  refused  by  Irenseus,  Clement,  and 
Origen,  placed  in  the  Ethiopic  Bible  side  by  side  with 
Job,1  recovered  after  the  obscurity  of  centuries  by  the 
energy  of  a  British  traveller  —  it  forms  an  important 
link  in  that  mixture  of  poetry,  history,  and  prediction 
which  marks  the  literature  called  apocalyptic.  The 
latest  researches  place  the  appearance  of  its  chief  por- 
tion in  the  reign  of  John  Hyrcanus  during  his  wars 
with  Syria.2 

It  is  the  "  Divina  Commeclia "  of  those  troubled 
times,  and  disjointed,  meagre,  obscure  as  is  itsTheBookof 
diction,  the  conception  has  a  grandeur  of  its  Bnc?hi'30. 
owrn.  The  hero  of  the  vision  is  beyond  the  Its  visions- 
Captivity,  beyond  even  the  Idumsean  Job,  beyond 
Moses  or  Abraham  ;  he  is  the  nrysterious  solitary  Saint 
of  the  antediluvian  world,  who  "  walked  with  God  and 
"was  not,  for  God  took  him,"  who  was  already  in  East- 
ern legends  regarded  as  the  founder  of  astronomical3 
science.  He  it  is  who,  for  the  sake  of  the  future  gen- 
erations of  mankind,  is  called  to  hold  converse  with  the 
angels.4  The  first  vision  at  which  he  assists  is  no  less 
than  the  fall  of  the  Angels  "  who  kept  not  their  first 
"estate"  — not  the  fall  of  Milton's  "Paradise  Lost,"  of 
which  neither  in  the  Hebrew  nor  the  Christian  Scrip- 
tures is  there  any  trace,  but  the  fall  of  Byron's 
'*  Heaven   and   Earth,"    which   took   place   when    the 

1  Laurence's  Preface  to  (he  Book        8  Alexander  Polyhistor,  in  Eus  , 
]f  Enoch,  pp.  vi.  xiv.  xv.  xvi.  Prcep.  Ev.,  ix.  17.     Fabricius,  Cod, 

2  Dillmann's   Preface  to  the  Book  Pseudep.,  i.  315,  217. 
/ Enoch,  xliv.-xlvii.  4  Enoch  yi. 


416  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX 

heavenly  watchers  descended  on  the  snowclad  top  of 
Hermon  —  the  highest  height  that  an  Israelite  had 
ever  seen — and  intermixed  with  the  daughters  of  men. 
Now  for  the  first  time  we  have  the  full  array  of  the 
names  both  of  the  good  and  the  evil  hierarchy  —  some 
of  which  have  struck  root  in  Christian  theology  or 
poetry,  such  as  Michael.  Gabriel.  Raphael,  and  Uriel ; 
some  of  which  have  altogether  passed  away  —  Raguel, 
Surian.  Urian.  and  Salakiel.  Of  the  fallen  spirits,  the 
only  name  which  coincides  with  the 1  Biblical  imagery 
is  Azazel. 

Thence  Enoch  moves  on.  the  first  of  travellers,  the 
patriarch  of  discoverers.  Palestine  is  unrolled  before 
him.  He  finds  himself  in  *'•  the  midst  of  the2  earth," 
according  to  the  topography  still  perpetuated  Its  topog. 
in  the  stone  which  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  raph-v' 
Sepulchre  marks  the  centre  of  the  globe.  Every  phys- 
ical feature  of  the  as  yet  unborn  Jerusalem  is  touched 
with  a  true  geographical  instinct.  He  sees  the  holy 
mountain,  with  the  mystic  spring  of  Siloa  flowing  from 
beneath  it ;  he  sees  the  lower  eminence  in  the  west. 
parted  from  the  Temple  mount  by  the  central  depres- 
sion of  the  city.  He  sees  Mount  Olivet,  as  yet  un- 
named, rising  on  the  east,  and  ;:  deep,  not  broad'"3 
lies  the  dark  glen  through  which  flows  its  thread  of 
water.  Above  and  below  he  contemplates  the  steep 
precipices,  with  the  olive  trees  clinging  to  their 
rocky  sides,  and  he  asks,  as  the    sacred   topographer 

1  Satan  is  only  once  mentioned  in-     the   jrlen,  by   Christiana   called   the 
cidentally,  Enoch  liii.  Valley  of  Jehoshaphat,  by  Moham- 

2  Enoch  xxvi.  medans  either  the  Valley  of  Hinnom 
8  Enoch  xxvi.  xxvii.  liv.  xl.     The     or  of  Fire,  and  uniformly  so  called 

valley    described   is   not   the   valley     (sometime?  in  conjunction  with  the 
3ommonly  called  the  Valley  of  Hin-     southern  valley)  in  the  Bibla. 
aom,  on  the  south  of  Jerusalem,  but 


Lect.  XLIX.  THE   BOOK  OF  ENOCH.  417 

might  now  ask:  "For  what  purpose  is  this  accursed 
"  valley  ?  "  It  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  with  awe, 
as  thus,  for  the  first  time,  in  this  primseval  vision  there 
is  disclosed  to  us,  not,  indeed,  the  name  (for  no  names 
could  be  admitted,  from  the  nature  of  the  work),  but 
the  locality  which  afterwards  was  to  furnish  forth  the 
most  terrible  imagery  that  the  world  has  ever  known. 
It  was  the  glen  of  the  sons  of  Hinnom,  the  Valley  of 
Gehenna. 

And  then  the  scattered  allusions  of  the  ancient 
prophets  are  gathered  into  one  point,  and  the  angelic 
guide  announces  to  Enoch  that  it  is  the  vale  reserved 
for  those  who  are  accursed  forever,  where  they  who 
have  blasphemed  God  shall  be  gathered  together  for 
punishment,  where  the  Judgment  shall  be  pronounced, 
and  the  just  shall  be  severed  from  the  bad.  Until  the 
Judgment  there  is  some  deeper  pit  of  fire,  reaching  by 
subterranean  channels  down  to  the  deep  Dead  Sea,  from 
time  to  time,  as  it  was  believed,  vomiting  forth  columns 
of  sulphurous  smoke.1 

And  thence  the  seer2  wandered  on  towards  those 
eastern  hills  which  close  the  horizon  beyond  the  Jordan 
valley,  and  looked  into  the  wild  woodlands  and  far- 
reaching  desert  of  Arabia,  and  his  view  was  lost  in  the 
mountains  of  myrrh  and  frankincense  and  trees  of  all 
manner  of  foliage  in  some  blessed  land  far 
away,  overhanging  the  Erythraean  sea.  The  '  °pes' 
Judgment  itself  is  described  more  clearly  than  ever  be- 
fore. The  Ancient  of  Days,  more  especially  in  this 
oook  called  by  the  affecting  name  of  "the  Lord  of 
"  spirits ;  "  convenes  all  the  race  of  mankind  before 
Him,  and  by  His  side  is  "  the  Chosen,"  3  "  the  Son  of 

1  Dillmann,   132.     Probably   Cal-         8  See  note  at  the  end  of  Lecture 
lirhoe.     Enoch  Ixii.  XLVIIL 

3  Enoch  xxviii.  xxix. 
53 


418  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lkct.  XLIX. 

"  Man,"  "  whose  name  was  known  to  Him  before  the 
"birth  of  the  sun,  or  of  the  stars; "  and  with  the  severer 
images  of  Judgment  are  combined  those  figures  of  an 
inexhaustible  goodness  which  are  soon  to  receive  an 
application  that  shall  be  immortal.  "  There  is  near 
"  him  a  spring  of  righteousness  which  never  fails,  and 
"  round  it  are  springs  of  wisdom  ;  and  all  that  are 
k-  thirsty  drink  of  these  springs,  and  become  full  of 
'•  wisdom  and  have  their  habitations  with  the  right- 
"  eous,1  the  chosen,  and  the  holy."  It  is  the  first  dis- 
tinct intimation  of  a  Deliverer  wTho  shall  appear  with 
the  mingled  attributes  of  gentleness  and  power,  not,  as 
in  the  older  prophets,  reigning  over  Israel,  but  as  tak- 
ing part  in  the  universal  judgment  of  mankind.2 

From  these  and  like  figures  was  furnished  forth  the 
imagery  from  which  four  at  least  of  the  Books  3  of  the 
Christian  Scriptures  have  largely  drawn ;  and  one,  the 
Epistle  of  St.  Jude,  by  direct  quotation  of  a  splendid 
passage  which  is  not  unworthy  of  the  impressive  con- 
text to  which  it  is  transferred.  Nor  was  there  wanting 
a  keen  glance  of  historical  insight.  As  in  the  vision 
of  Milton's  Adam,  the  Patriarch  surveys,  under  the 
figure  of  a  wandering4  flock,  the  fortunes  of  the 
Chosen  People,  down  to  the  last  trials,  thinly  veiled,  of 
the  contemporary  Asmonean  princes. 

Yet,  perhaps,  even  more  remarkable  than  these 
germs  of  the  religious  doctrine  of  the  last  age  of 
Judaism  and  the  first  age  of  Christianity  are  the  em- 
phatic reiterated  statements  in  which,  as  the 
Father  of  Science,  he  is  led  through  all  the 

1  Enoch  xlvi.-xlviii.  leaves  them  in  this  period,  as  well  as 

2  There  is  a  doubl  whether  the  the  whole  of  the  3d  Sibylline  Book. 
'similitudes"  which  contain  this  8  1  Pet,  iii.  19,  20;  2  Pet.  ii.  4,  5: 
epresentation    are    not    of    a    later  Jude  14,  15;  Rev.  xx.  9-12. 

flate  (Colani,  Lex   Esperances   Mes-         4  Enoch  lxxxix.-xci. 
tianiques,  834).    But  Ewald  (v.  360) 


Lect.  XLIX.  THE  BOOK  OF  ENOCH.  419 

spheres  of  the  universe  and  taught  to  observe  the  reg- 
ularity, the  uniformity1  of  the  laws  of  nature  which, 
indeed,  had  not  altogether  escaped  the  older  Psalmists 
and  Prophets,  but  which  had  never  before  been  set 
forth  with  an  earnestness  so  exuberant  and  so  impas- 
sioned. Had  Western  Christendom  followed  the  ex- 
ample of  the  Ethiopic  Church,  and  placed  the  Book  of 
Enoch  in  its  Canon,  many  a  modern  philosopher  would 
have  taken  refuge  under  its  authority  from  the  attacks 
of  ignorant  alarmists,  many  an  enlightened  theologian 
would  have  drawn  from  its  innocent  speculations  cogent 
arguments  to  reconcile  religion  and  science.  The 
physics  may  be  childish,  the  conclusions  erroneous. 
But  not  even  in  the  Book  of  Job  is  the  eager  curi- 
osity into  all  the  secrets  of  nature  more  boldly  en- 
couraged, nor  is  there  any  ancient  book,  Gentile  or 
Jewish,  inspired  by  a  more  direct  and  conscious  effort 
to  resolve  the  whole  system  of  the  universe,  moral,  in- 
tellectual, and  physical,  into  a  unity  of  government, 
and  idea,  and  development. 

II.  But  there  was  a  phenomenon  more  certainly  con- 
nected with  this  epoch  than  these  doubtful  tales  or 
predictions  —  a  phenomenon  of  the  most  fatal  impor- 
tance for  the  history  of  Palestine,  and  also  of  the  most 
universal   significance    for  the    history  of  the  The  rise  of 

°  ^  religious 

coming  Church.  It  was  the  appearance  of  re-  parties. 
ligious  parties  and  of  party-spirit  under  the  name  of 
Pharisee,  Sadducee,  and  Essene,  first  appearing  under 
Jonathan,  developed  under  John  Hyrcanus,2  leading  to 
fierce  civil  war  under  Alexander  Jannseus,  and  playing 
the  chief  part  in  the  tremendous  drama  which  marks 
the  consummation  of  this  period.     Of  the  origin  of  the 

1  Enoch   i.   xvii.-xxxvi.  xli.  lvii.         2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  5. 
viii.  Ixv.-lxviii.  Ixxi.-lxxxi. 


420  THE   ASMOXEAX  DYNASTY.  Leot.  XL1X. 

first  of  these  three  famous  names  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  The  idea  which  had  never  been  altogether  ab- 
sent from  the  Jewish  nation,  and  which  its  peculiar 
local  situation  had  fortified  and  justified,  of  "  a  people 1 
"  dwelling  alone  ; "  which  had  taken  new  force 

The  o  ' 

Pharisees.  an(j  £re  under  the  stern  reforms  of  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah;  which  sprang  into  preternatural  vigor  in 
the  Maccabaean  struggle,  had  now  reached  that  point 
at  which  lofty  aspirations  petrify  into  hard  dogmatic 
form,  at  which  patriots  become  partisans  and  saints  are 
turned  into  fanatics,  and  the  holiest  names  are  per- 
verted into  by-words  and  catch-words.  There  was  one 
designation  of  this  tendency  which  had  preceded  that 
of  "  Pharisee,"  in  the  time  of  Judas  Maccabaeus,  and 
which  already  showed  at  once  the  strength  and  the 
weakness  of  the  cause.  It  was  that  of  the  Chasidim, 
or,  as  in  the  Greek  translation,  Assideans,  "  the  Pious." 
It  was  they  who  furnished  the  nucleus  of  the  insur- 
gents under  Mattathias  ;  it  was  they  whose  obstinate 
foolhardiness  vexed  the  great  soul,  whose  narrow  sel- 
fishness cost  the  life,  of  Judas.  With  him  all  notice  of 
the  party  passes  from  sight,  but  to  reappear  under  his 
descendants  in  the  "  Pharisee  "  or  "  Separatist  "  — 
the  school  or  section  of  the  nation,  which  sometimes 
geemed  almost  to  absorb  the  nation  itself,  and  which 
placed  its  whole  pride  and  privilege  in  its  isolation 
from  intercourse  with  the  Gentile  world.2  The  name 
of  Pharisee,  which  has  acquired  so  sinister  a  sound  to 
modern  Christian  ears,  has  been  bandied  to  and  fro  by 
various  parties  to  describe  the  characteristics  of  their 
opponents.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  mouth  of  Milton,  it 
has  been  applied  "  to  the  scarlet  Prelates,  insolent  to 
;i  maintain  traditions."     Sometimes,  as  with  a  playful 

i  Num.  xxiii.  1.  2  See  Lecture  XL VIII. 


Lect.  XLIX.  THE  PHARISEES.  421 

critic  amongst  our  modern  poets,  it  has  been  applied  to 
"  our  British  Dissenters."  In  these  contradictory  com- 
parisons there  is  a  common  element  of  truth  in  regard 
to  the  rigid  separation  from  the  outside  world,  and 
the  claims  to  superior  sanctity  which  have  sometimes 
marked  alike  the  pretensions  of  the  hierarchy  and  of 
Puritanism.  It  may  also  be  said  that  in  their  constant 
antagonism  to  the  established  priesthood  and  govern- 
ment of  Palestine,  the  Pharisees,  whilst  "  Conformists  " 
to  every  particular  of  the  law,  were  "Nonconformists  " 
in  their  relation  to  the  more  moderate  principles  of  the 
Asmonean  dynasty.  But  these  imperfect  comparisons 
fail  to  exhaust  their  position.  They  were  more  than 
a  sect.  They  were  emphatically  the  popular  party, 
which  had  the  ear  of  the  Jewish  public,  whose  state- 
ments won  an  easier  hearing  than  was  granted  to  any 
words  that  came  from  the  lips  of  King  or  Priest. 
■'  They  were  the  true  children }  of  the  age."  They 
"  were  the  religious  world."  It  was  a  matter  both  of 
principle  and  policy  to  multiply  the  external  signs  by 
which  they  were  distinguished  from  the  Gentile  world 
or  from  those  of  their  own  countrymen  who  approached 
towards  it.  They  styled  themselves2  "the  sages"  or 
u  the  associates."  Tassels  on  their  dress ;  scrolls  and 
small  leather  boxes  fastened  on  forehead,  head,  and 
neck,  inscribed  with  texts  of  the  law;  long  prayers 
offered  as  they  stood  .in  public  places;  rigorous  ab- 
stinence ;  constant  immersions ;  these  were  the  sacra- 
mental badges  by  which  they  hedged  themselves 
round.  And  in  order  to  clothe  these  and  all  like  pecul- 
iarities of  practice  and  doctrine  with  a  divine  author- 
'ty,  there  now  entered  into  their  teaching  that  strange 

1  Ewald,  v.  366;  Josephus,  Ant.,         3  Kitto,  iii.  696. 
cvii.  2,  4. 


422  THE    ASMONEAN   DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

fiction  of  which  the  first1  appearance  is  in  the  reign  of 
John  Hyrcanus  —  that  all  such  modern  peculiarities  as 
had  either  silently  grown  up  or  been  adopted  for  the 
The  oral  defence  of  their  system  were  part  of  an  oral 
tradition,  tradition 2  which  had  been  handed  down  from 
Moses  to  the  Great  Synagogue  and  thence  to  them- 
selves. The  maintenance  of  this  hypothesis  —  so  en- 
tirely without  foundation,  but  produced  as  the  basis 
alike  of  usages  the  most  trivial,  such  as  the  minute  reg- 
ulations for  observing  the  Sabbath  and  the  mode  of 
killing  their  food,  or  doctrines  the  most  sublime,  though 
not  taught  in  the  Pentateuch,  such  as  the  immortality 
of  the  soul  —  would  be  almost  unaccountable,  were  it 
not  that  analogous  fables  have  been  adopted  in  the 
Christian  Church,  with  almost  as  little  evidence.  It  is 
hardly  more  surprising  than  the  belief  that  all  the  sys- 
tems of  Church  government,  Episcopates,  Patriarch- 
ates, Presbyterian  Synods,  or  Congregational  Unions, 
were  part  of  the  original  scheme  of  the  Founder  of 
Christianity,  and  handed  clown  either  by  oral  traditions, 
or  by  obscure  intimations,  and  then,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Roman  Patriarchate,  embodied  at  a  later  period  in 
official  documents.  The  growths  of  the  two  fictions 
illustrate  each  other.  Each  has  borne  on  its  back  a 
medley  of  truth  and  falsehood,  institutions  good  and 
bad,  which  have  been  alternately  a  gain  and  a  loss  to 
the  religious  systems  based  upon  it.  In  each  case  the 
true  moral  is  to  face  the  intrinsic  value  or  worthless- 
ness  of  the  conclusions,  and  not  to  invest  the  hetero- 
geneous mixture  with  an  equal  importance  such  as  it 
could  only  have  if  the  ground  on  which  it  rests  were  as 
l^rue  as  it  is  in  each  case  palpably  false. 

1  Joseplius,  Ant.,  xiii.  10,  5,  6.  2  See   Twislcton's   article  on  the 

Sadducees  in  Dictionary  of  the  Bible, 


Lect.  xlix.  the  sadducees.  423 

The  name  of  the  second  section  into  which  the  Jew- 
ish community  was  now  divided  is  wrapped  in  The  Sad. 
doubt.  There  is  a  tradition  that  the  name  of  ducees- 
"  Sadducee  "  was  derived  from  Zadok,1  a  disciple  of 
Antigonus  of  Socho.  But  the  statement  is  not  earlier 
than  the  seventh  century  after  the  Christian  era,  and 
the  person  seems  too  obscure  to  have  originated  so 
widespread  a  title.  It  has  been  also  ingeniously  con- 
jectured that  the  name 2  as  belonging  to  the  whole 
priestly  class,  is  derived  from  the  famous  High  Priest 
of  the  time  of  Solomon.  But  of  this  there  is  no  trace 
either  in  history  or  tradition.  It  is  more  probable 
that  as  the  Pharisees  derived  their  name  from  the 
virtue  of  Isolation  (pharishah)  from  the  Gentile  world 
on  which  they  most  prided  themselves,  so  the  Sad- 
ducees derived  theirs  from  their  own  especial  virtue 
of  Righteousness  (zadikah),3  that  is,  the  fulfilment  of 
the  law,  with  which,  as  its  guardians  and  representa- 
tives of  the  law,  they  were  specially  concerned.  The 
Sadducees  —  whatever  be  the  derivation  of  the  word 
—  were  less  of  a  sect  than  of  a  class.4  It  is  prcbable 
that,  if  the  Pharisees  represented  or  were  represented 
by  the  Scribes'  or  Rabbis,  the  Sadducees  were  the  offi- 
cial leaders  of  the  nation,  and  that  their  strength  was 
in  the  Priests  whose  chief  during  this  period  had  so 
often  been  the  head  of  the  State.  They  were  satisfied 
with  the  Law,  as  it  appeared  in  the  written  code,  with- 
out adopting  the  oral  tradition  on  which  the  Pharisees 
laid  so  much  stress.     They  were  contented  with  the 

1  See  Ginsburg,  in  Kitto's  Cyclo-  guistic   difficulty  of  their  not  being 
pcedia,  iii.  781,  782.  called    Zadikim    by   supposing   that 

2  See  Geiger's  Urschrift;  Twisle-  Zadukim  was  adopted  as  more  ex- 
ion,  in  Dictionary  of  Bible.  actly  corresponding  to  Pharusim. 

8  Low  (see  Kitto,  iii.   726);  De-        4  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  1G,  2;  B.J, 
'enbourg,    78.     He    meets   the  lin-     i.  5,  3;  Acts  iv.  1-6;  v.  17. 


424  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

reputation  of  being  "just"  (as  their  name  implied)  — 
that  is  to  say,  of  fulfilling  the  necessary  requirements 
of  the  law,1  without  aspiring  to  the  reputation  of 
"  sanctity ; "  that  is,  of  increasing  the  minute  distinc- 
tions between  themselves  and  their  Gentile  neighbors. 
Their  vit,w  of  human  conduct  was  that  it  was  within 
the  control  of  a  man's  own  will,  and  was  not  overruled 
by  the  mere  decrees  of  fate.  Their  view  of  the  future 
existence  was  that,  as  in  the  Mosaic  law,  a  veil  was 
drawn  across  it,  and  that,  according  to  the  saying  of 
Antigonus  of  Socho.  men  were  not  to  be  influenced  by 
the  hope  of  future  reward  and  punishment. 

The  name  of  the  third  sect  has  an  edge  somewhat 
less  sharp  than  the  two  others  because  its  tendencies 
were  less  marked,  and  its  part  in  the  conflicts  of  the 
TheEs  time  less  conspicuous.  Yet  here,  as  in  the 
senes.  other  two  divisions,  the  most  probable  explana- 
tions of  the  word  "  Essene  "  point  not  to  any  personal 
leader  or  founder,  but  to  the  moral  and  social  character- 
istics of  their  school.  It  indicates  either  the  "  watch- 
"  ful  contemplation"  or2  "the  affectionate  devotion" 
or  "the  silent  thoughtfulness  "  of  those  who  retired 
from  the  strife  of  parties  and  nourished  a  higher  spirit- 
ual life  in  communities  of  their  own.  Deep 3  in  the 
recesses  of  the  Jordan  valley,  where  afterwards  there 
arose  the  monasteries  of  Santa  Saba  and  of  Quaranta- 
nia,  or  the  hermits  of  Engedi,  these  early  coenobites 
took  refuge.  A  corresponding  school  in  like  manner 
were  the  precursors  of  Antony  in  the  desert  of  the 
Egyptian  Thebaid.     In  their  retirement  from  the  out- 

1  Comp.  Luke  i.  6,  and  the  con-  2  Ewald,  v.  370  ;  Professor  Light- 

stant  repetition  of  the  word  Sikcuoj  foot  on  Colossians,  119. 

in  the  speech  of  John  Hyrcanus  on  8  Joscphus,  Ant.,  xiii.  5,  10;  xvii 

he  occasion  of  his  joining  the  Sad-  1,  5;  B.  J.,  ii.  8,  2-4. 
ducees      Joscphus,  Ant.,  xiii.  10,  5. 


Lect.  xlix.  the  couples.  .  425 

ward  ceremonial  of  the  Temple,  in  their  ascetic  prac- 
tices, in  their  community  of  property,  in  their  simplic- 
ity of  speech,  in  their  meals,  partly  social  and  partly 
religious,  we  see  the  first  beginning  of  those  outward 
forms,  and  in  some  respects  of  those  inward  ideas, 
which  before  another  century  was  passed  were  to  be 
filled  with  a  new  spirit,  and  thus  to  attain  an  almost 
universal  ascendency. 

It  is  in  the  reign  of  John  Hyrcanus  that  these  divi 
sions  start  for  the  first  time  before  our  eyes.  The  coup- 

les,  Joshua 

Under  him,  we  trace  the  first  appearance  of  and  Nittai. 
those  "  couples," 1  of  two  leading  sages  who  hence- 
forth, in  an  unbroken  succession,  figure  at  the  head  of 
the  Pharisaic  school,  perhaps  2  at  the  head  of  the  na- 
tional Council,  and  whose  pithy  aphorisms  shine  with  a 
steady  light  through  the  darkness  or  the  fantastic  me- 
teors of  the  Talmudic  literature.  Already  this  double 
aspect  of  truth  had  appeared  in  the  two  Josephs  in  the 
Maccaboean  time  —  the  son  of  Joazar  insisting  only  on 
the  value  of  learning,  the  son  of  John  laying  down 
rio-id  rules  against  exchanging  even  a  word  with 
women.3  The  same  division  is  more  strongly  marked 
in  Joshua,  the  son  of  Perachiah  and  Nittai  of  Arbela. 
"  Avoid  a  bad  neighbor,  choose  not  an  impious  friend, 
1  doubt  not  the  judgment  that  shall  fall  on  the 
"wicked."4  So  spoke  the  harder  and  more  negative 
theology  of  Nittai.  "  Get  thyself  a  master,  secure  a 
"  friend,  and  throw  thy  judgment  of  every  one  into  the 
"scale  of  his  innocence."  So  spoke  the  more  charitable 
and  positive  teaching  of  Joshua,  the  son  of  Perachiah. 

1  Derenbourg,  93,  456.  that  it  is  not  here  discussed.     (See 

2  The  formation  of   the   national     Derenbourg,  90,  92.) 

Council  at  this  time  is  so  doubtful        3  Mishna,  Pirke  Aboth,  i.  4,  5 

*  Ibid.  i.  6    7. 


426  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

In  a  strange 1  legend  of  later  times  he  is  represented  as 
having  lived  onwards  to  the  final  struggle  of  the  Phari- 
saic school,  and  confronted  its  great  adversary,  and  re- 
pelled Him  by  a  harsh  reproof.  Rather,  we  may  say, 
he  has,  by  this  one  sentence,  received  by  anticipation 
that  Teacher's  blessing ;  nor  is  it  impossible  that  he 
had  heard,  in  the  exile  to  which  he  was  afterwards 
driven  in  Alexandria,  something  of  the  true  value  of 
a  teacher  outside  his  own  circle  —  something  of  Aris- 
totle's doctrine  of  a  disinterested  friendship  —  some- 
thing of  that  "sweet  reasonableness''  which  the  Greek 
language  expresses  in  one  forcible  word  and  which 
this  fine  old  Hebrew  maxim  so  well  conveys  in  sub- 
stance. To  the  teaching  of  which  these  two  sayings 
are  the  highest  expression,  but  which,  doubtless,  was 
mixed  with  the  baser  matter  of  the  party,  Hyrcanus 
dovoted  himself. 

At  last  came  a  sudden  crash.  It  was  after  the  over- 
throw of  the  sanctuary  of  Gerizim  and  the  city  of  Sa- 
maria that,  at  the  close  of  his  career,  John  Hyrcanus 
entertained  at  a  splendid  banquet  the  nobles  and  schol- 
ars of  his  court.  With  a  characteristic  combination  of 
the  present  glories  and  the  past  sufferings  of  his  dy- 
nasty, the  tables  were  laden  with  the  dainties  of  regal 
luxury,  and  the  roots  and  herbs,  such  as  those  on  which 
his  ancestors  had  lived  in  the  mountains.2  On  this  sol- 
emn day,  Hyrcanus,  like  Samuel  of  old,  asked  for  an 
opinion  on  his  administration"  and  his  conduct.  One 
rhe  mpturc  guest  took  up  the  challenge.  In  him  the 
Pharisees,  growing  jealousy  of  the  fanatical  party  found 
b.  c.  109.  a  voice#  it  was  Eleazar  the  Pharisee.  For  no 
moral  delinquency,  for  no  violence  in  war  or  peace  was 

1  Dcrenhourg,  94.  3  Josephus,  Ant.,   xiii.  10,   5,    6  '■ 

2  Griitz,  iii.  99,  453.  Derenbourg,  79,  80. 


Lect.  xlix.  tile  religious  parties.  427 

the  splendid  Pontiff  arraigned.  It  was  the  same  relig- 
ious scruple  which  allied  "  the  Pious "  with  Alcimus 
against  Judas  Maccabseus.  It  was  the  well-known  per- 
versity of  theological  animosity,  which,  under  the  cover 
of  such  scruples,  allied  itself  with  personal  enmity,  and, 
raking  up  the  ashes  of  forgotten  or  invented  scandals, 
insisted  on  questioning  the  validity  of  the  Priestly  de- 
scent of  Hy rcaims,  on  the  allegation  of  an  exploded 
calumny  that  his  mother  —  the  high-spirited  wife  of 
Simon  —  had  once  been  a  captive  in  the  Syrian  army, 
and  thus  shared  the  bed  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes.  The 
fiery  spirit,  the  tender  recollections  of  John  were  stirred 
up  by  this  reflection  on  her  mother's  honor.  At  that 
moment  another  rose  from  the  table.  It  was  Jonathan 
the  Saclducee.  Now  was  come  the  time  to  reclaim  the 
Prince  from  leaning  to  those  whom  the  Priestly  caste 
regarded  as  their  rivals.  In  Eleazar  he  denounced  the 
whole  party,  who,  though  with  certain  reserves,  stood 
by  their  comrade.  From  that  time  John  Hyrcanus 
broke  away  from  the  school  which  he  had  hitherto 
courted.  From  that  time  the  feud  between  the  two 
parties  was  alternately  fostered  and  shunned  by  his 
descendants. 

One  dreadful  interlude  between  these  contests1  in- 
troduces to  us  for  a  moment  the  third  party,  of  which 
the  real  significance  is  reserved  for  the  next  gener- 
ation. Aristobulus,  the  son  of  Hyrcanus,  whose  family 
affections  were  entirely  absorbed  in  his  brother  Antigo- 
nus.  had  been  brought  back  from  his  campaign  in  Itu- 
raea  by  an  illness,  which  confined  him  to  the  Palace 
which  his  father  had  built  in  the  Temple  precincts. 
Antigonus  had  gone  in  full  military  pomp,  in  splendid 
armor,  and  with  his  troops  around  him,  to  offer  prayers 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  11,  2. 


428  THE   ASMONEAN   DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX 

in  the  Temple  for  his  brother's  recovery,  choosing,  as 
The  Esse-  was  ^ne  custoni  for  all  solemn  occasions,  the 
nianproph-  grea£  festival  of  the  Tabernacles.  His  ene- 
b.  c.  loo.  m-es  p0is0ne{j  the  mind  of  the  King  against 
him.  He  was  invited  to  come  and  show  his  new  suit 
of  armor  to  the  King,  and,  as  he  passed  along  the 
covered  corridor  from  the  Temple  to  the  fortress,  he 
was  waylaid  in  a  dark  corner  of  the  gallery  and  assas- 
sinated. The  sudden  shock  of  remorse  brought  on  a 
violent  fit  of  sickness  in  the  unfortunate  Aristobulus. 
The  basin  containing  the  blood  which  he  had  vomited 
was  spilt  on  the  pavement  where  his  brother  had  fallen. 
The  cry  of  horror  which  rang  through  the  Palace  gave 
a  new  shock  to  the  King,  who  expired  with  his  broth- 
er's name  on  his  lips.  Amidst  these  tragic  scenes,  it 
was  remembered  that  a  singular  being,  marked  prob- 
ably by  his  white  dress,  was  standing  in  the  Temple  as 
Antigonus  passed  to  the  fatal  gallery.  "Look,"  he 
said,  to  his  companions,  "  I  am  a  false  prophet ;  for  I 
"  predicted,  and  rny  words  have  never  yet  failed,  that 
"  Antigonus  would  die  this  very  clay  at  Strato's  Tower, 
"  and  here  he  is  on  the  evening  of  this  day  still  alive.' 
He  did  not  know  that  the  dark  corner  where  Antigo- 
nus was  to  fall  was  called  by  the  same  name  as  the  sea- 
side fortress ;  and  in  a  moment  his  prediction  was  fill- 
filled.  This  unerring  prophet  was  Judas  the  Essene, 
first  of  that  mysterious  sect  known  to  us  by  name, 
and  one  of  the  few  who  is  ever  discerned  remaining 
amongst  the  haunts  of  men.  But  that  solitary  glimpse 
gives  a  foretaste  of  the  effect  to  be  produced  by  an- 
other Prophet  who  should  appear  in  like  manner,  sur- 
rounded by  disciples  in  the  Temple  court,  also  with 
dark  forebodings,  though  on  a  grander  scale,  which 
would  be  verified  by  events  in  a  still  more  startling 
catastrophe. 


Lect.  XLIX.  THE   WAR   OF  PARTIES.  429 

This,  however,  was  but  a  momentary  flash  from  the 
secluded  world  in  which  the  Essenes  lived.  In  the  suc- 
ceeding reigns  it  is  the  contending  factions  of  Sadducee 
and  Pharisee  that  fill  up  the  whole  horizon.  The  hos- 
tility sown  between  the  Pharisees  and  Hyrcanus  Alexander 
continued  through  the  reign  of  Alexander  Jan-  b?c?1o6. 
wseus.  On  one  occasion  they  were  not  ashamed  to  re- 
vive the  old  calumny  against  his  grandmother,  and  at 
the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  the  worshippers  in  the  Tem- 
ple, inspired  by  them,  pelted  the  Royal  Priest  with  cit- 
rons from  the  boughs1  which  they  carried  on  that  day, 
because  the  slight  variation  in  his  mode  of  nerformino- 
the  libation  reminded  them  that2  he  neglected  the 
Pharisaic  usage.  There  long  remained  a  remembrance 
of  the  insult  in  a  hoarding  of  wood  which  he  built 
round  the  altar  to  exclude  the  repetition  of  such  out- 
rages. But  from  this  moment  it  seemed  as  if,  in  the 
mind  of  the  Sadducean  Prince,  the  passion  of  a  tiger 
were  enkindled  by  the  mingled  fury  of  revenge  and  of 
partisanship.  On  that  occasion  six  thousand  perished 
in  a  general  massacre.  On  another,  when  the  Phari- 
sees, with  the  inherent  vice  of  fanatics,  sacrificing  their 
patriotism  to  their  partisanship,  sided  with  the  Syrians 
against 3  their  King,  he  stormed  the  fortress  where  they 
had  taken  refuge,  and  then,  at  a  banquet  given  to  his 
harem  on  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  ordered  eight  hun- 
dred of  the  leaders  of  the  faction  to  be  executed.  It 
was  the  first  distinct  appearance  of  the  Cross  on  the 
hills  of  Palestine.  It  is  not  without  significance  that 
the  ruling  passion  which  led,  whether  to  the  eight  hun- 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  13,  5.     A  2  Instead  of  pouring  water  on  the 

tike  outrage  was  committed  by  the  altar,    he   poured  it  on  the  ground 

Jews  of  Babylonia  against  a  Rabbi  (Derenbourg,  98). 

nthe  3d  century  (Derenbourg,  99).  8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  14,  2. 


430  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Ijsct.  XL1X. 

drecl  crucifixions  under  the  High  Priesthood  of  Alexan- 
der Jannseus,  or  the  single  crucifixion  under 
the  High  Priesthood  of  Caiaphas,  was  religious 
party-spirit.  The  day  on  which  *  the  remnant  of  the 
party  escaped  from  these  horrors  to  the  slopes  of  Leb- 
anon was  observed,  after  their  subsequent  triumph,  as 
a  festival,  and,  with  the  usual  Rabbinical  exaggeration, 
the  sea  was  at  the  hour  of  the  execution  said  to  have 
overwhelmed  one  third  of  the  habitable  globe.  The 
secret  motives  of  the  spirit  of  modern  party  are  re- 
flected in  all  their  shapes  in  the  closing  scene  of  Alex- 
ander's life.  He  admitted  on  his  death-bed  that  he  had 
mistaken  his  policy  in  alienating  from  him  the  Phari- 
saic influences,  and  advised  his  wife  to  conciliate  them, 
in  a  speech  which  is  a  masterpiece  of  cynicism,  and  is 
the  more  remarkable  as  being  recounted  by  a  Pharisee. 
A  most  significant  touch  was  added  by  the  Rabbinical 
tradition,2  describing  the  hangers-on  of  a  successful 
party  as  more  dangerous  than  the  partisans  them- 
selves :  "  Fear  not  the  Pharisees,  and  fear  not  those 
"  who  are  not  Pharisees.  But  fear  the  hypocrites  who 
"  pretend  to  be  Pharisees  —  the  varnished  Pharisees  — 
"  whose  acts  are  the  acts  of  Zimri,  and  who  claim  the 
"reward  of  Phinehas."  Not  less  characteristic  of  such 
warfare  is  the  sudden  turn  by  which  the  King  whom  in 
life  they  had  reviled  as  a  usurper  and  a  schismatic  re- 
ceived from  them  the  most  sumptuous  of  funeral  hon- 
ors, and  that  the  very  Priest  whose  copy  of  the  Law,8 
though  written  in  letters  of  gold,  they  had  forbidden  to 
be  used,  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  second  founder  of 
their  school. 

Alexandra's   adoption    of  this   policy  was   rendered 

1  Dcrenbourg,  99.  8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  1G,  1.     But 

2  Derenbourg,  101.  see  Dcrenbourg,  101. 


Lect.  xlix.  the  religious  parties.  431 

more  easy  by  the  circumstance  that  her  brother  was 
Simeon  the  son  of  Shetach.  Under  his  au-  Alexandra. 
spices  Pharisaism  acquired  an  ascendency B>  a  79- 
which  it  never  lost.  Already  in *  the  reign  of  her 
fierce  husband  he  had  contrived  to  keep  his  place  at 
court  between  the  King  and  Queen,  to  bandy  retorts 
with  the  King,  to  squeeze  money  from  him  for  Simeon 
the  needy  Nazarites.  After  Alexander's  death  ^eetsa°ch°f 
it  was  he  who  recalled  his  predecessors  Joshua,  B-  c'72- 
the  son  of  Perachiah,  and  Judah,  the  son  of  Tobai, 
who  was  recalled  to  Jerusalem  from  Alexandria, 
whither  he  had  fled.  "  Jerusalem  the  Great  to  Alex- 
andria the  Little.  My  husband,  my  beloved  one, 
"  stays  with  you,  whilst  I  remain  desolate." 2  The 
severe  code  of  the  Sadducean  "  Justice  "  was  abolished 
except  when  it  suited  the  Pharisees  to  be  severe,3  "  for 
"  the  discouragement  of  the  Sadducees."  The  chiefs 
•of  that  party  were  expelled  from  the  Council.  Like 
the  less  fanatical  in  all  ages,  the  bond  of  cohesion  be- 
tween4 them  was  more  relaxed  than  in  the  hands  of 
their  more  determined  and  dogmatic  opponents^  and 
they  were  perforce  compelled  to  bow  to  the  public 
opinion,  which  sided  with  the  Pharisaic 6  or  popular 
party.  The  clays  of  the  14th  of  Thammuz  and  the 
28th  of  Tebet  were  in  consequence  celebrated  as  festi- 
vals. The  libation  of  water  in  the  Feast  of  Tab- 
ernacles, which  Alexander  Jannaaus  had  neglected, 
though  in  itself  wholly  insignificant  and  without  a 
shadow  of  warrant  from  the  Law,  was  raised  to  the 
first   magnitude,    with   illuminations,  processions,    and 

1  See  the  somewhat  tedious  story         4  Josephus,  Ant.,  xviii.  1,  4. 

n  Derenbourg,  96,  97,  98.  6  Josephus,     ibid.  ;     Derenbourg, 

2  Derenbourg,  94,  102.  104. 
•  Derenbourg,  105,  106. 


432  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  xlix. 

dances.  "  He."  it  was  said,  "  who  has  never  seen  this 
"rejoicing  knows  not  what1  rejoicing  is."  The  whole 
congregation  descended  with  the  Priest  to  the  Spring 
of  Siloam  —  the  water  was  brought  back  in  a  golden 
pitcher  —  with  shouts  of  triumph,  cymbals,  and  trum- 
pets, which  resounded  louder  and  louder  as  the  Priest 
stood  on  the  altar.  "  Lift  up  thy  hancl^"  they  said, 
as  though  the  irreverent  Pontiff  was  still  before  them, 
and  the  water  was  then  solemnly  poured  to  the  west, 
and  a  cup  of  wine  to  the  east,  the  song  still  continuing, 
"  Draw  water  with  joy  from  the  wells  of  salvation." 
It  is  a  striking  example  of  a  noble  meaning  infused  into 
the  celebration  of  a  miserable  party-triumph  when, 
"  on  the  last  great  day  of  the  Feast "  of  Tabernacles, 
a  hundred  years  later,  there  stood  in  the  Temple 
court*  One  whom  the  Pharisees  hated  with  a  hatred 
as  deadly  as  that  with  which  they  pursued  the  memory 
of  Alexander  Jannseus,  and  cried  "  with  a  loud  voice,"* 
—  piercing,  it  may  be,  through  the  clatter  of  chant 
and  music,  —  "If  any  man  have  thirst,  let  him  come 
"unto  me2  and  drink." 

The  description  of  these  internecine  feuds,  to  which 
the  earlier  history  of  the  Jewish  Church  furnishes  no 
exact  parallel,  —  not  even  in  the  angry  factions 3  of 
the  time  of  Jeremiah,  —  shows  how  nearly  we  have  ap- 
proached to  those  modern  elements  which,  as  a  great 
historian  of  our  own  day  has  well  pointed  out,  are 
found  in  certain  stages  of  every  ancient  nation. 

They  present  the  first  appearance  of  that  singular 
phenomenon  of  religious  party,  which,  continuing 
down  to  the  latest  days  of  the  Jewish  commonwealth, 
reappears  under  other  forms  both  in  the  early  and  id 

1  Derenbourg,  103.  3  Lecture  XL. 

2  John  vii.  37  (see  Godet). 


Lect,  xlix.  the  religious  parties.  433 

the  later  ages  of  the  Christian  Church  —  that  is  to  sayf 
divisions  ostensibly  on  religious  subjects,  but  carried  on 
with  the  same  motives  and  passions  as  those  which 
animate  divisions  in  the  State.  The  true  likenesses  of 
the  scenes  we  have  just  been  considering  are  not, 
where  Josephus  looks  for  them,  in  the  schools  of  Greek 
philosophy,  but  in  the  tumult  of  Grecian  politics. 
The  seditions  and  revolutions  of  Corcyra,  with  the 
profound *  remarks  of  Thucydides,  contain  the  picture 
of  all  such  religious  discords,  from  the  Pharisees  and 
Sadducees  downwards.  The  word  by  which  in  the 
later  Greek  of  this  epoch  they  are  described,  hceresis,2 
is  the  equivalent  of  the  earlier  word  stasis  —  neither 
having  any  relation  to  the  modern  meaning  of 
"  heresy,"  both  expressed  by  the  English  word  "  fac- 
"  tion."  The  names  of  "  Pharisee  "  and  "  Sadducee," 
and  perhaps  "  Essene,"  had,  indeed,  as  we  have  seen, 
a  moral  or  theological  significance,  but  this  meaning 
was  often  disavowed  by  the  parties  themselves  and  was 
constantly  drifting  into  other  directions.  The  apella- 
tions  of  "  the  Isolated  "  and  "  the  Just,"  and  perhaps 
"  the  Holy  "  or  "  the  Contemplative,"  passed  through 
the  natural  process  to  which  all  party  names  are  liable , 
first,  an  exclusive  or  exaggerated  claim  to  some  pecul- 
iar virtue,  or  also  a  taunt  from  some  opposing  quarter ; 
next,  adopted  or  given,  heedlessly  or  deliberately,  by 
some  class  or  school  —  then  poisoned  by  personal  riv- 
alry, and  turned  into  mere  flags  of  discord  and  weap- 
ons of  offence.  Such  in  later  times  has  been  the  fate 
of  the  names  of  "  Christian,"  "  Catholic,"  "  Puritan," 
u  Orthodox,"   "  Evangelical,"  "  Apostolical,"  "  Latitu- 

1  Thucyd.,  iii.  84.     See  Keim,  I.     14;  xxvi.  5;  xxviii.  22;  1  Cor.  xi.  19 
S22.  Gal.  v.  20;  2  Pet.  ii.  1. 

2  Acts  v.  1 7  ;  xv.  5  ;  xxiv.  5 ;  xxiv. 

55 


434  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

"  dinarian,"  "  Rationalist,"  "  Methodist/'  "  Ritualist," 
"  Reformed,"  "  Moderate,"  "  Free."  Whatever  the 
words  once  meant,  they  in  later  times  have  often  come 
to  be  mere  badges  by  which  contending  masses  are  dis- 
tinguished from  each  other. 

In  these,  therefore,  as  in  all  parties,  the  inward  and 
outward,  the  formal  and  the  real,  divisions  never  ex- 
actly corresponded.  There  were  Pharisaic  opinions 
which  should  have  belonged  to  those  who  were  not 
"  Separatists,"  and  Sadducaic  usages  which  we  should 
have  expected  to  find  amongst  the  Pharisees.  The 
doctrine  of  Immortality,  which  the  Pharisees  believed 
to  have  been  derived  from  the  oral  tradition  of  Moses, 
was  if  not  derived,  yet  deeply  colored,  from  those 
Gentile  philosophies  and  religions  which  they  professed 
to  abhor.1  In  the  long  and  tedious  list  of  ritual  differ- 
ences which  parted  the  two  sections,  there  are  many 
minute  particularities  on  which  the  Pharisees  took  the 
laxer,  the  Sadducees  the  stricter  side. 

Yet,  further,  though  it  might  have  seemed  as  if  the 
whole  nation  were  absorbed  by  these  apparently  ex- 
haustive divisions,  it  is  clear  that  there  were  higher 
spirits,  who,  though,  perhaps,  nominally  belonging  to 
one  or  other  side,  rose  above  the  miserable  littlenesses 
of  each. 

No  loftier  instruction  is  preserved  from  these  times 
than  that  of  two  teachers  who  must  at  least  be  re- 
garded as  the  precursors  of  the  Sadducees.  One  is2 
Antigonus  of  Socho,  whose  doubt,  if  it  were  a  doubt, 
on  future  retribution,  is  identical  with  that  expressed 
in  the  vision  of  the  noblest  and  holiest  of  Christian 
kings,  to  whom  on  the  same  shores  of  Palestine  a 
stately  form  revealed  herself  as  Religion,  with  a  brazier 

i  See  Lectures  XL VII.,  XL VIII.  2  See  Lecture  XLVIII. 


Lect.  xltx.  the  religious  parties.  435 

ill  one  hand  to  dry  up  the  fountains  of  Paradise,1  and 
a  pitcher  in  the  other  to  quench  the  fires  of  Hell,  in 
order  that  men  might  love  God  for  Himself  alone. 
Another  was  Jesus  the  son  of  Sirach,  whose  solemn  and 
emphatic  reiterations  of  the  power  of  the  human  will 
and  the  grandeur  of  human  duty  helped  to  fill  the  void 
left  by  his  total  silence  of  a  hope  beyond  the  grave.2 

Of  the  Pharisees  we  know  that  a  hundred  years  later 
there  was,  as  we  shall  see,  a  Hillel,  a  Gamaliel,  and  a 
Saul,  who  were  to  be  the  chosen  instruments  in  pre- 
paring or  in  proclaiming  the  widest  emancipation  from 
ceremonial  rites  that  the  world  had  yet  seen  ;  whilst 
the  doctrine  of  Immortality  which  it  is  the  glory  of  the 
Pharisaic  schools  to  have  appropriated  and  consoli- 
dated, was,  like  an  expiring  torch,  to  be  snatched  from 
their  hands,  and  kindled  with  a  new  light  for  all  suc- 
ceeding generations.  Of  the  seven  classes  into  which 
the  Pharisees  were  divided,  whilst  six  were  character- 
ized by  themselves  with  epithets  of  biting  scorn,  one 
was  acknowledged  to  be  animated  by  the  pure  love  of 
God.3  Even  in  these  first  days  of  the  fierce  triumph 
of  Pharisaism  the  Jewish  Church  at  large  owed  Simeon 

the  son  of 

much  to  the  influence  of  Simeon  the  son  of  shetach. 
Shetach,  who,  during  the  reign  of  his  sister  Alexandra, 
ruled  supreme  in  the  Court  and  cloisters  of  Jerusalem. 
There  were,  indeed,  stories  handed  down  of  him  and 
his  colleague  which  showed  that  the  Pharisees  could 
exercise  as  much  severity  in  behalf  of  the  Written  Law 
as  they  were  fond  of  alleging 4  against  the  Sadducees. 
Eighty  witches  were  executed  at  Ascalon  under  Sim- 
eon's auspices,  and  he  persisted,  from  a  legal  scruple, 

1  Joinville's  Life  of  S.  Louis.  8  Munk's  Palestine,  513. 

2  See  Milraan's  Hist,  of  Jews,  ii.         4  Derenbourg,  106,  107. 
i2. 


436  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lect.  XLIX. 

in  the  execution  of  his  own  son,  though  knowing  that 
he  was  falsely  accused.  Nor  can  we  avoid  the  thought 
that  the  advantages  which  he  gave  to  the  legal 1  posi- 
tion of  women  were  suggested  by  the  influence  of  his 
strong-minded  Pharisaic  sister,  Queen  Alexandra.  But 
there  are  traces  of  a  better  and  more  enduring  spirit 
in  some  of  his  words  and  works.  That  was  an  acute 
saving  of  his  colleague,  the  son  of  Tobai:  "Judge, 
"  make  not  thyself  an  advocate  ;  whilst  the  parties  are 
"  before  thee,  regard  them  both  as  guilty  ;  when  they 
"  are  gone,  after  the  judgment,  regard  them  both  as 
"  having  reason."  2  That  was  a  yet  wiser  saying  of 
Simeon  :  "  Question  well  the  witnesses  ;  but  be  careful 
"  not  by  thy  questions  to  teach  them  how  to  lie."  But 
his  main  glory  was  that  he  was  the  inaugurator  of  a 
complete  system  of  education  throughout  the  country. 
Under  his  influence,  for  the  first  time,  schools  were 
established  in  every  large  provincial  town,  and  all 
boys  from  sixteen  years  and  upwards  were  compelled 
to  attend  them.  No  less  than  eleven  different  names 
for  schools  now  came  into  vogue.  "  Get  to  thyself  a 
"  teacher,"  3  said  Joshua,  the  son  of  Perachiah,  "  and 
"  thou  gettest  to  thyself  a  companion."  "  Our  principal 
"  care,"4  such  from  this  time  was  the  boast  of  Josephus, 
"is  to  educate  our  children."  "The  world,"  such  be- 
came the  Talmudical5  maxim,  "is  preserved  by  the 
"  breath  of  the  children  in  the  schools." 

With  nobler  tendencies  thus  recognized  on  either 
Com  rchen-  sme  we  neec*  not  w0iwevj  though  we  may 
iSje^rish  stumble,  at  the  startling  fact  that  the  Jewish 
church.       Church  and  nation,  even  in  its  last  extremities, 

1  Derenbourg,  108,  110.  4  Josephus,  c.  Ap.,  i.  12. 

2  Mislmn,  Pirke  Aboth,\.  8,  9.  5  Dr.  Ginsburg  in  Kitto,  i.  728. 
»  Pirke  Aboth,  i.  G. 


Lect.  xlix  the  religious  parties.  437 

was  able  to  contain  these  three  divergent  schools  with- 
out disruption.  So  strong  was  the  common  bond  of 
country  and  of  faith  that  the  Sadducee,  who  could  find 
in  the  Ancient  Law  no  ground  for  hope  of  a  future  ex- 
istence, and  who  resolutely  refused  to  accept  the  con- 
venient fiction  of  an  oral  tradition,  could  worship  — 
although  varying  on  innumerable  points,  every  one  of 
which  was  a  watchword  of  contention  —  with  the  Phar 
isee,  to  whom  the  Oral  Law  was  greater  than  the  writ- 
ten, whose  belief  in  immortality  was  bound  up  with 
the  heroic  struggles  of  the  Maccabees,  and  who  was  in 
a  state  of  chronic  antagonism  to  the  hierarchical  and 
aristocratic  class  of  which  the  Sadducee  was  the  guar- 
dian and  representative ;  whilst  even  the  Essenes,  who 
withdrew  from  the  strife  of  Jerusalem  to  their  oasis  by 
the  Dead  Sea,  who  took  part  in  none  of  the  ceremonial 
ordinances,  unless  it  were  that  of  ablution,  were  yet 
not  counted  as  outcasts,  but  are  described  even  by 
Pharisaic  historians  as  amongst  the  purest  and  holiest 
of  men  ;  and  when  their  seers  wandered  for  a  moment 
into  the  haunts  of  men  they  were  welcomed  as  proph- 
ets even  by  the  fierce  populace  and  politic  leaders 
of  the  capital.  Such  a  latitude  in  the  National  Church 
of  the  Chosen  People,  startling  as  it  seems,  must  have 
accustomed  the  first  propagators  of  Christianity  to  a 
comprehension  which  to  all  their  successors  has  seemed 
almost  impracticable.  When1  Paul  felt  that  the  Corin- 
thian Church  could  embrace  even  those  who  received 
and  those  who  doubted  the  Resurrection  of  the  Dead, 
he  knew  that  it  was  no  larger  admission  than  had  been 
made  by  the  Jewish  Church  when  it  included  both 
Pharisees    and    Sadducees;  2    and   when    he    entreat- 

1  1  Cor.  xv.  12.  c.  4  (p.  10),  the  Sadducees  are  con- 

8  It  is  true  that  in  the  Seder  Olam,     demned  to  everlasting  punishment  in 


438  THE   ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.  Lbct.  XLIX 

ed ]  the  Roman  Church  to  acknowledge  as  brothers  both 
those  who  received  and  those  who  rejected  the  Jewish 
ordinances,  it  was  in  principle  the  same  catholicity 
which  had  induced  both  Pharisee  and  Sadducee  to 
recognize  the  idealizing  worship  of  the  Essene. 

And  as  particular  individuals  of  each  party  were 
better  than  their  party,  as  the  Jewish  Church  itself 
was  wider  than  the  three  parties,  singly  or  collectively, 
so  there  were  those  who,  from  their  commanding  char- 
acter and  position,  overlooked,  and  enable  us  to  over- 
look, calmly  the  whole  troubled  'sea  of  faction  and  in- 
trigue. Such  on  the  whole  was  the  Asmonean  dynasty, 
beginning  with  Mattathias,  in  his  patriotic  disregard 
of  the  superstitious  veneration  of  his  own  adherents 
for  the  Sabbath,  continuing  throughout  the  great 
career  of  Judas  Maccabseus,  through  the  truly  national 
policy  of  Simon  and  of  his  son  John,  through  the  keen 
onias  the  if  cynical  insight  of  Alexander  Jannseus.  Such 
charmer.  wag  ^Q  gQQft  QnjaSj  perhaps  an  Essene,2  "  that 
"  righteous  man  beloved  of  God."  He  was  renowned  for 
the  efficacy  of  his  prayers.  To  the  teeming  fertility 
which  had  marked  the  reign  of  the  Pharisaic  Alex- 
andra, there  had  succeeded  an  alarming  drought. 
Onias,  at  the  entreaty  of  his  countrymen  (so  runs  the 
tradition),  stood  within  the  magic  circle  which  he  had 
traced,  and  implored  "  the  Lord  of  the  World  "  to  send 
his  gracious  rain.3     "  Thy  children  have  asked  me  to 

Gehenna.    But  this  later  view  brings  not  only  in  the  incidental  allusions 

out  more  forcibly  the  contrast  with  in  1  Kings  xvii.  1,  xviii.  41,  James 

the  time  when  the  high  priests  were  v.  17,  but  in  the  fixed  belief  of  the 

ill  Sadducees.  Arab  tribes  that  the  monks  of  Mount 

1  Rom.  xiv.  1-6.  Sinai  have  the  power  of  producing  it 

2  Gr'atz,  hi.  130,  133.  by  opening  or  shutting  their  books. 
8  The  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  the  Robinson's  Researches,  i.  132. 

prayers  of  boly  men  for  rain  appears 


Lect    XLIX.  ONIAS   THE   CHARMER.  439 

"  pray,  for  I  am  as  a  son  of  Thy  house  before  Thee.  I 
'"  swear  by  Thy  great  name  that  I  will  not  move  hence 
"till  Thou  hast  had  pity  upon  them."  A  few  drops 
fell ;  "  I  ask  for  more  than  this,"  he  said,  "  for  a  rain 
"  which  shall  fill  wells,  cisterns,  and  caverns."  It  fell 
in  torrents.  "Not  this,"  continued  he;  "I  ask  for  a 
"  rain  which  shall  show  Thy  goodness  and  Thy  bless- 
"  ing."  It  fell  in  regular  descent  until  the  people  had 
to  mount  to  the  terraces  of  the  Temple.  "  Now,"  they 
said,  "  pray  that  the  rain  may  cease."  "  Go,"  he  said, 
"and  see  whether  the  '  stone  of  the  wanderers'  is 
"  covered."  At  this  Simeon,  the  son  of  Shetach,  the 
head  of  the  Pharisees,  contemptuously  rebuked  him 
and  said:  "Thou  deservest  excommunication.  But 
"  what  can  I  do  ?  Thou  playest  before  God  like  a 
"spoiled  child  before  its  father  who  does  all  that  it 
"wishes."1  This  was  the  innocent,  infantine  spell 
which  Onias  cast  over  the  imagination  of  his  people,  as 
his  memory  remained  in  the  Talmudic  legends.  But 
a  more  genuine  glory  attaches  to  his  name  as  it  ap- 
pears in  the  sober  history.  In  the  fratricidal  struggle 
which  broke  out  between  the  two  sons  of  Alex- 

•  T  f  B.  c.  69. 

andra  (it  may  be  supposed,  immediately  alter 
this  drought),  when  the  popular  party  of  the  Pharisees 
was  ranged  on  the  side  of  Hyrcanus,  and  the  priestly 
party  of  the  Sadducees  on  the  side  of  Aristobulus,  the 
old  Onias  was  dragged  from  his  seclusion  to  give  to  the 
besiegers  the  advantage  of  his  irresistible  prayers,  He 
stood  up  in  the  midst  of  them  and  said :  "  0  God,  the 
"  King  of  the  whole  world,  since  those  that  stand  with 
"  me  now  are  Thy  people,  and  those  that  are  besieged 
"  are  Thy  Priests,  I  beseech  thee  that  Thou  wilt  neither 
"  hearken  to  the  prayers  of  those  against  these,  nor  of 
'  these  against  those."  2 

1  Derenbourg,  112.  2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  2,  1. 


440  THE  ASMONEAN  DYNASTY.       Lect.  XL1X 

That  was  the  true  protest1  against  party-spirit  in 
every  Church  and  in  every  age.  With  the  insensibil- 
ity to  all  superior  excellence  which  that  passion  natur- 
ally engenders,  the  fanatics  amongst  whom  he  stood 
stoned  him  to  death.  He  died  a  martyr  in  a  noble 
cause  —  a  worthy  precursor  of  Him  who  in  a  few  short 
years  was  to  condemn  in  the  same  breath  the  teaching 
common  alike  to  Pharisee  and  Sadducee,  "  which  is 
"  hypocrisy  " 2  —  that  is  "  affectation,"  acting  a  part ; 
who  was  to  denounce  in  the  most  unsparing  terms  that 
false3  "religious  world"  of  which  the  murderers  of 
Onias  were  the  chief  representatives  —  who  was  Him- 
self to  suffer,  with  His  own  first  martyr,  almost  on  the 
same  spot,  from  the  combination  of  the  two  parties,  for 
both  of  whom  Onias  prayed,  and  for  both  of  whom  He 
and  Stephen  prayed  also.4 

1  It  is  perhaps  not  quite  certain         2  Matt.  xv.  6. 
that  the  Pharisees  took  the  part  of        8  Matt,  xxiii.  1-39. 
the  people  on  this  occasion,  but  we        4  Luke  xxiii.  34 ;  Acts  vii.  50. 
may  be  sure  that  the  Sadducees  were 
with  the  priests. 


LECTURE  L. 

HEROD. 


AUTHORITIES. 

I.    Contemporary. 

1 .  Nicolas  of  Damascus,  private  secretary  of  Herod,  "  Univer- 

"  sal  History,"  in  144  books,  quoted  by  Josepbus  {Ant.,  xiii. 
12,  6 ;  xiv.  1,  3  ;  4,  3 ;  6,  4 ;  xvi.  7,  1 ;   C.  Ap.  ii.  7). 

2.  Chronicles  of  Herod,  quoted  by  Josepbus  {Ant.,  xv.  6,  3). 
II.    Josepbus,  Ant.,  xiv.  1 ;  xviii.  8,  4 ;  B.  J.,  i.  6-23. 

III.  Heatben  authorities  :  — 

1.  Dio  Cassius,  xxxvii.  8,  15-20. 

2.  Strabo,  xvi. 

3.  Tacit.  Hist.  v.  4. 

4.  Plutarcb,  de  Superst.  8  ;  Lives  of  Pompey  and  Antony. 

5.  Cicero,  Pro  Flacco,  §  28. 

6.  Appian,  de  Bello  Mithridat. 

IV.  Talmudical  authorities,  as  given  in  Derenbourg,  c.  vii.  viii.  ix.  x. 

xi.  and  the  Mishna. 


LECTURE  L. 

HEEOD. 

The  civil  war  between  Hyrcanus  and  Aristobulus 
was  interrupted  by  the  appearance  of  a  new  Pom_ey 
actor  on  the  scene.  Fresh  from  his  beneficent the  6reat- 
war  against  the  pirates  who  infested  the  Mediterranean, 
from  his  more  brilliant  victory  over  the  last  of  the 
mighty  potentates  of  Asia,  Mithridates,  the  marvellous 
king  of  Pontus,  Pompey  the  Great,  with  all  his  fame  in 
its  first  and  yet  untarnished  splendor,  moved  towards 
Palestine.  At  Antioch  he  dissolved  the  last  remnant 
of  the  Syrian  monarchy,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  an 
insufficient  rampart  against  the  inroads  of  the  Arme- 
nians and  Parthians  from  the  far  East.  He  then  ad- 
vanced to  Damascus.  It  was  a  year  memorable  in 
Roman  history  for  the  consulship  of  Cicero,  the 
conspiracy  of  Catiline,  the  birth  of  Augustus. 
It  was  not  less  memorable  for  the  meeting  which,  in  the 
oldest  of  Syrian  cities,  took  place  between  the  illustrious 
Roman  and  the  two  aspirants  for  the  Jewish  Monarchy. 
The  rivals  were  attracted  by  the  enormous  prestige  of 
the  man,  who,  having  revived  the  terror  of  the  Roman 
name  in  Africa,  and  crushed  the  most  formidable  insur- 
rections in  Spain  and  Italy,  had  now  vanquished  the 
kings  of  Asia.  They  were  led  yet  more  by  the  wide- 
spread fame  for  humanity  and  moderation  which  made 
him  the  arbiter  of  the  contending  princes  of  the  East.' 

1  Appian,  de  Bell.  Mitk.,  251. 


444  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

No  personage  of  such  renown  and  authority  had  been 
seen  by  any  Israelite  eyes  since  the  meeting  of 
Alexander  and  Jaddua.  There  was,  indeed, 
something  even  in  the  outward  appearance  of  the  fa- 
mous Eoman  which  recalled  the  aspect  of  the  famous 
Greek.  The  august  expression,  almost  as  of  venerable 
age,  which  blended  so  gracefully  with  the  bloom  of  his 
manly  prime  and  his  singularly  engaging  manners,  the 
very  mode  in  which  his  hair  was  smoothly  turned  back 
from  his  brow,  the  liquid  glance  of  his  eyes,  resembled 
the  traditional  likeness  of  Alexander.1  Modern  travel- 
lers, as  they  stand  before  the  colossal  statues  of  Pom- 
pey,  whether  that  gentler  figure  in  the  Yilla  Castellazzo, 
near  Milan,  or  that  commanding  form  in  the  Spada  Pal- 
ace at  Rome,  "  at  whose  base  great  Caesar  fell,"  so  won- 
derfully preserved  through  the  vicissitudes  of  neglect, 
revolution,  and  siege,  can  frame  some  notion  of  the 
mingled  awe  and  affection  which  he  inspired  and  which 
the  Jewish  princes  must  have  felt  when  they  bowed  be- 
fore him.  It  was  in  such  interviews  that  he  must  have 
shone  conspicuously,  of  whom  it  was  said  that  "  when 
"  he  bestowed  it  was  with  delicacy,  when  he  received  it 
"  was  with  dignity  ;  and  though  he  knew  not  how  to 
"  restrain  the  offences  of  those  whom  he  employed,  yet 
"  gave  so  gracious  a  reception  to  those  who  came  to 
"  complain  that  th^y  went  away  satisfied."  2 

On  one  side  was  Aristobulus,  the  gallant  King  whose 
Aristobu-  niSn  spirit  called  forth  at  every  turn  the  reluc- 
lusL  tant  admiration  of  the  cynical  historian,   and 

which  displayed  itself  even  in  the  very  act  of  pleading 
his   cause,  blazing,  like  an  Indian  prince,  with  every 

1  Plutarch,  Pompey,  c.  2.  In  his  tri-     or  military  cloak,  of  Alexander  (Ap- 
umph  he  wore  the  actual  "  chlamys,"     pian,  Bell.  Millu,  253). 

2  Plutarch,  Pompey,  c.  1. 


Lect.  L.  ARISTOBULUS   AND  HYRCANUS.  445 

conceivable  mark  of  royalty,  surrounded  by  his  young 
nobles,  conspicuous  with  their  scarlet  mantles,  gay 
trappings,  and  profusion  of  clustering  locks.1  At  the 
feet  of  the  victorious  general  he  laid  a  gift  so  magnifi- 
cent that  long  afterwards  it  was  regarded  as  one  of  the 
wonders  of  the  Capitol  —  a  golden  vine,  the  emblem  of 
his  nation,  growing  out  of  a  "  Pleasaunce  "  2  and  bear- 
ing the  name  of  his  father,  Alexander.  From  all  this 
barbaric  pomp,  which  to  the  yet  uncorrupted  taste  of 
the  proud  Roman  citizen  produced  no  other  feeling 
than  disgust,  the  conqueror  turned  to  the  other  Hyrcanus 
candidate.  Hyrcanus  was  as  insignificant  as  n' 
Aristobulus  was  commanding  in  character  and  appear- 
ance —  then,  as  always,  a  tool  in  the  hands  of  others. 
With  him  were  the  heads  of  the  great  party  who,  in 
their  hostility  to  the  Sadducaic  and  Pontifical  elements 
represented  by  the  rival  brother,  did  not  scruple  to  in- 
sinuate against  him  the  charge  that  he  was  not  a  genu- 
ine friend  of  Rome.  And  with  them,  inspiring  and 
guiding  all,  was  the  man  destined  to  inaugurate  for  the 
Jewish  nation  the  last  phase  of  its  existence.  When 
John  Hyrcanus  subdued  the  Edomites,  and  incorpo- 
rated them  into  the  Jewish  Church,  he  little  dreamed 
that  he  was  nourishing  the  evil  genius  that  would  be 
the  ruin  of  his  house.  The  son  of  the  first  native  gov- 
ernor of  the  conquered  Iclumaea,  who  himself 
succeeded  to  his  father's  post,  was  Antipater  or 
Antipas,  father  of  Herod.  With  a  craft  more  like  that 
of  the  supplanter  Jacob  than  the  generosity  of  his  own 
ancestor  Esau,  he  perceived  that  his  chance  of  retain- 
ing his  position  would  be  imperilled  by  the  indepen- 
dent  spirit   of   the   younger   brother,    and   might   be 

1  Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  6.  2  repirux^.      Strabo,   in  Josephus, 

Ant.,  xiv.  3,  1. 


446  HEKOD.  Lect.  L 

secured  by  making  himself  the  ally  and  master  of  the 
elder.  To  his  persuasions  the  Roman  general  lent  a 
willing  ear,  and  Hyrcanus  was  preferred.  Not  without 
a  struggle  did  Aristobulus  surrender  his  hopes.  From 
Damascus  he  retired  to  the  family  fortress,  the  Alex- 
andreum,  commanding  the  passes  into  southern  Pales- 
tine. Thither  Pompey  followed,  and  after  one  or  two 
futile  parleys  Aristobulus  finally,  in  a  fit  of  des- 
peration broke  away  from  the  stronghold,  threw 
himself  into  Jerusalem,  and  there  defied  the  conqueror 
of  the  East. 

The  crisis  was  at  once  precipitated.  Every  step  of 
Pompey's  Pompey's  advance  is  noted,  like  that  of  Sen- 
jeiicho.  nacherib  of  old.  But  it  was  by  a  route  which 
no  previous  invader  had  adopted.  From  the  fortress 
of  Alexandreum,  instead  of  following  the  central  thor- 
oughfare by  Shechem  and  Bethel,  he  plunged  into  the 
Jordan  valley  and  encamped  beside  the  ancient  city 
where  Joshua  had  gained  his  first  victory  over  the  Ca- 
naanites.  It  would  almost  seem  as  if  it  was  the  fame 
of  Jericho  wdiich  had  occasioned  this  deviation.  It  was 
a  spot,  which,  having  long  sunk  into  obscurity,  at  thk 
period  revived  with  a  glory  unknown  in  the  earlier 
days  of  the  Jewish  Monarchy.  Long  afterwards  in  the 
homes  of  Roman  soldiers  was  preserved  the  recollection 
of  the  magnificent  spectacle  which  burst  upon  them, 
when  for  the  first  time  they  found  themselves  in  the 
midst  of  the  tropical  vegetation  which  even  now  to 
some  degree,  but  then  transcendently,  surrounded  the 
city  of  Jericho.  In  the  present  day  not  one  solitary 
relic  remains  of  those  graceful  trees  which  once  were 
the  glory  of  Palestine.  But  then  the  plain  was  filled 
with  a  splendid  forest  of  Palms,  "  the  Palm-grove,"1  as 

1  "Phoenicon"  (Strabo,  xvi.  2,  41;  4,  21). 


Lect.  L,  POMPEY'S  march.  447 

it  was  called,  three  miles  broad  and  eight  miles  long, 
interspersed  with  gardens  of  balsam,  traditionally 
sprung  from  the  balsam-root  that  the  Queen  of  Sheba 
brought  to  Solomon  —  so  fragrant  that  the  whole  forest 
was  scented  with  them,  so  valuable  that  a  few  years 
later  no  richer  present  could  be  made  by  Antony  to 
Cleopatra.  In  this  green  oasis,  beside  the  "  diamonds 
"  of  the  desert,"  which  still  pour  forth  their  clear 
streams  in  that  sultry  valley,  but  which  then  were  used 
to  feed  the  spacious  reservoirs  in  which  the  youths  of 
those  days  delighted  to  plunge  and  frolic  in  the  long 
days  of  summer  and  autumn,  the  Roman  army  halted 
for  one  night. 

It  was  a  day  eventful  not  only  for  Palestine.  The 
shades  of  evening  were  falling  over  the  encampment. 
Pompey  was  taking  his  usual  ride  after  the  march  — 
careering  round  the  soldiers  as  they  were  pitching  their 
tents,  when  couriers  were  seen  advancing  from  the 
north  at  full  speed,  waving  on  the  top  of  their  lances 
branches  of  laurel,  to  indicate  some  joyful  news.  The 
troops  gathered  round  their  general,  and  entreated  to 
hear  the  tidings.  At  their  eager  wishes  he  sprang 
clown  from  his  horse  ;  they  extemporized  a  tribune,  has- 
tily constructed  of  piles  of  earth  and  of  the  packsadclles 
which  lay  on  the  ground,  and  he  read  aloud  the  dispatch, 
which  announced  the  crowning  mercy  of  his  Oriental 
victories  —  the  death  of  his  great  enemy  Mithridates. 

Wild  was  the  shout  of  joy  which  went  up  from  the 
army.1     It  was  as  though  ten  thousand   ene-  To  Jerusa, 
mies  had  fallen.     Throughout  the  camp  went lem- 

1  Plutarch    (Pompey,    41)    places  Petra  was  left  to  Scaurus.     And  the 

this    scene    on    his   way   to   Petra.  localities   of    Jericho   are   far   more 

But,  besides  the  positive  statement  suitable  for  it  than  the  neighborhood 

pf  Josephus,  which  fixes  it  at  Jeri-  of  Petra. 
dio,   it  is  clear  that  the  attack  on 


448  HEROD.  Leci    L. 

up  the  smoke  of  thankful  sacrifice,  and  the  festivity  of 
banquets  rang  in  every  tent.  Filled  with  this  sense  of 
triumphant  success  the  army  started  at  break  of  day 
for  the  interior  of  Judsea,  after  first  occupying  the  for- 
tresses which  commanded  that  corner  of  the  Jordan  val- 
ley —  those  which  were  known  by  the  name,  perhaps, 
of  the  foreign  mercenaries  who  manned  them  —  as  well 
as  those  which  guarded  the  Dead  Sea.  Thus  Pompey 
advanced  in  perfect  security  towards  the  mysterious 
and  sacred  city  which  possessed,  no  doubt,  a  special  at- 
traction for  the  curiosity  of  the  inquiring  Roman. 
From  the  north,  from  the  south,  from  the  west,  the 
situation  of  Jerusalem  produces  but  little  effect  on  the 
spectator.  But,  seen  from  the  east  —  seen  from  that 
ridge  of  Olivet,  whence  Pompey,  alone  of  its  conquer- 
ors, first  beheld  it,  rising  like  a  magnificent  portent  out 
of  the  depth  and  seclusion  of  its  mountain  valleys  —  it 
must  have  struck  him  with  all  its  awe,  and,  had  his 
generous  heart  forecast  all  the  miseries  of  which  his 
coming  was  the  prelude,  might  have  well  inspired  some- 
thing of  that  compassion  which  the  very  same  view, 
seen  from  the  same  spot  ninety  years  later,  awakened 
in  One  who  burst  into  tears  at  the  sight  of  Jerusalem, 
and  mourned  over  her  fatal  blindness  to  the  grandeur 
of  her  mission.     From  this  point  Pompey  descended, 

and  swept  round  the  city,  to  encamp  on  the 

level  ground  on  its  western  side.1 
Once  more  Aristobulus  ventured  into 2  the  conquer- 
or's presence  ;  but  this  time  he  was  seized  and  loaded 
with  chains.     Then  broke  out  within  the  walls  that 
bitter  internal  conflict  of  which  Jerusalem  henceforth 

1  Josephus,  B.  J.,  v.  12,  2.     But    accounts  as  to  the  time  of  this  cap- 
see  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  4,  2.  ture  are  not  essential. 
a  The   variations   in  the  different 


Lect.  L. 


POMPEY.  449 


has  been  so  often  the  scene.  The  Temple  was  occupied 
by  the  patriots,  who,  even  in  this  extremity,  would  not 
abandon  their  king  and  country.  The  Palace  and  the 
walls  were  seized  by  those  who,  in  passionate  devotion 
to  their  party,  were  willing  to  admit  the  foreigner. 
The  bridge  between  the  Palace  and  the  Temple  was 
broken  down  ;  the  houses  round  the  Temple  mount 
were  occupied.  Thus  for  three  months  the  siege 
was  continued.  As  if  to  bring  out  in  the  strongest 
relief  the  Jewish  character  in  this  singular  crisis,  the 
Sabbath,  which,  during  the  last  two  centuries  had 
played  so  conspicuous  a  part  in  the  history  of  the 
nation,  was  turned  to  account  by  the  Romans  in  pre- 
paring their  military  engines  and  approaches,  which, 
even  in  spite  of  the  example  of  the  first  Asmonean, 
were  held  by  the  besieged  not  to  be  sufficient  cause  for 
a  breach  of  the  sacred  rest.  It  may  be  that  it  was  one 
of  the  instances  in  which  the  strict  inherence  of  the 
Sadducees  of  the  letter  of  the  Law  outran  the  zeal  of 
their  Pharisaic  opponents.  However  occasioned,  the 
Jewish  and  the  Gentile  historians  concur  in  represent- 
ing this  enforced  abstention  as  the  cause  of  the  capture 
of  the  city.  It"  was  the  greatest  sacrifice  that  the  Sab- 
batarian principle  ever  exacted  or  received.  At  last 
the   assault  was  made.1     So  big  with  fate  did  The  capture 

°  of  the  city. 

the  event  appear  that  the  names  of  the  officers  b.  c.  63. 
who  stormed  the  breach  were  all  remembered.     The 

1  It    is    doubtful    whether    "the  pare  Plutarch,  Qucest.  Conviv.,  vi.  12-, 

"Fast"    spoken  of   in   all   the   ac-  Acts  xxvii.  9.     On  the  other  hand, 

counts  was  the   Great   Fast  of   the  the  mention  of  the  third  month  by 

Day  of   Atonement,  in   autumn,   or  Josephus,  unless  it  means  the  third 

.he  smaller  fast  on  the  20th  of  the  month   of   the   siege,   points   to   the 

winter   month.     On   the   one  hand,  month  Chisleu  (see  Ussher's  A nnals, 

"  the  Fast "  was  the  usual  name  for  545).    Reimar,  on  Dio  Cass.,  xxxvii. 

the  vigil  of  the  Tabernacles.     Com-  16. 
57 


450  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

first  was  Cornelias  Faustus,  son  of  the  dictator  Sylla; 
and,  immediately  following,  the  centurions  Furius  and 
Fabius.  A  general  massacre  ensued,  in  which  it  is  said 
that  12,000  perished.  So  deep  was  the  horror  and 
despair  that  many  sprang  over  the  precipitous  cliffs. 
Others  died  in  the  flames  of  the  houses,  which,  like  the 
Russians  at  Moscow,  they  themselves  set  on  fire.  But 
the  most  memorable  scene  was  that  which  the  Temple 
itself  presented.  On  that  solemn  festival,  which  the 
enemy  had  chosen  for  their  attack,  the  Priests  were  all 
engaged  in  their  sacred  duties.  With  a  dignity  as  un- 
shaken as  that  which  the  Roman  senators  showed  when 
they  confronted  in  their  curule  chairs  the  Gaulish  in- 
vaders, two  centuries  before,  did  the  sacerdotal  order 
of  Jerusalem  await  their  doom.  They  were  robed  in 
black  sackcloth,  which  on  days  of  lamentation  super- 
seded their  white  garments,  and  sat  immovable  in 
their  seats  round  the  Temple  court,  "  as  if  they  were 
"  caught  in  a  net,"  till  they  fell  under  the  hands 1  of 
their  assailants.  And  now  came  the  final  outrage. 
That  which  in  Nebuchadnezzar's  siege  had  been  pre- 
vented by  the  general  conflagration  — that  which  Alex- 
ander forbore  —  that  from  which  Ptolemy  the  Fourth 
had  been,  as  it  was  supposed,  deterred  by  a  preternat- 
ural visitation  —  that  on  which  even  Antiochus  Epiph- 
anes  had  only  partially  ventured  —  was  now  to  be 
accomplished  by  the  gentlest  and  the  most  virtuous 
soldier  of  the  Western  world.  He  was  irresistibly 
drawn  on  by  the  same  grand  curiosity  which  had  al- 
u.iys  mingled  with  his  love  of  fame  and  conquest, 
Entrance  which  inspired  him  with  the  passion  for  seeing 
i'lni'v!1,!  with  his  own  eyes  the  shores  of  the  most  dis- 
aoifes.        tant  2  geaSj  tjR>  Atlantic,  the  Caspian,  and  the 

1  Plutarch,  Dc  Superst.,  c.  8.  2  Plutarch,  Pompey,  c.  38. 


Lect.  l.  pompey.  451 

Indian  Ocean,  which  Lucan  has  in  part  placed  in  the 
mouth  of  his  rival  in  ascribing  to  him  for  his  last  great 
ambition  the  discovery  of  the  sources  of  the  Nile.  He 
passed  into  the  nave  (so  to  speak)  of  the  Temple, 
where  none  but  Priests  might  enter.  There  he  saw  the 
golden  table,  the  sacred  candlestick,  which  Judas  Mac- 
uabaeus  had  restored,  the  censers,  and  the  piles  of  in- 
cense, the  accumulated  offerings  of  gold  from  all  the 
Jewish  settlements ;  but  with  a  moderation  so  rare  in 
those  times  that  Cicero1  at  the  time,  and  Josephus 
in  the  next  century,  alike  commended  it  as  an  act 
Df  almost  superhuman  virtue,  he  touched  and  took 
nothing.  He  arrived  at  the  vast  curtain  which  hung 
across  the  Holy  of  Holies,  into  which  none  but  the  High 
Priest  could  enter  but  on  one  day  in  the  year,  that  one 
day,  if  so  be,  that  very  day  on  which  Pompey  found 
himself  there.  He  had,  doubtless,  often  wondered  what 
that  dark  cavernous  recess  could  contain.  Who  or 
what  was  the  God  of  the  Jews  was  a  question  com- 
monly discussed  at  philosophical  entertainments  both 
before  and  afterwards.2  When  the  quarrel  between 
the  two  Jewish  rivals  came  to  the  ears  of  the  Greeks 
and  Piomans,  the  question  immediately  arose  as  to  the 
Divinity  that  these  Princes  both  worshipped.3  Some- 
times a  rumor  reached  them  that  it  was  an  ass's  head ; 
sometimes  the  venerable  lawgiver  wrapped  in  his  long 
beard  and  wild  hair ;  sometimes,  perhaps,  the  sacred 
emblems  which  once  were  there,  but  lost  in  the 
Babylonian  invasion;  sometimes  of  some  god  or  god- 
dess in  human  form  like  those  who  sat  enthroned  be- 
hind the  altars  of  the  Parthenon  or  the  Capitol.  He 
drew  the  veil  aside.     Nothing  more  forcibly  shows  the 

1  Cicero,  Pro  Flacco,  e.  28.  8  Dio  Cass.,  xxxvii.  15.         , 

s  Plutarch,  Qucest.,  v.  G,  1. 


452  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

immense  superiority  of  the  Jewish  worship  to  any 
which  then  existed  on  the  earth  than  the  shock  of  sur- 
prise occasioned  by  this  one  glimpse  of  the  exterior 
world  into  that  unknown  and  mysterious  chamber. 
"  There  was  nothing."  Instead  of  all  the  fabled  figures 
of  which  he  had  heard  or  read,  he  found  only  a  shrine, 
as  it  seemed  to  him,  without  a  Gocl,  because  a  sanctuary 
without  an  image.1  Doubtless  the  Grecian  philosophers 
had  at  times  conceived  an  idea  of  the  Divinity  as  spir- 
itual; doubtless  the  Etruscan  Priests2  had  established 
a  ritual  as  stately;  but  what  neither  philosopher  nor 
priest  had  conceived  before  was  the  idea  of  a  worship 
—  national,  intense,  elaborate  —  of  which  the  very  es- 
sence was  that  the  Deity  that  received  it  was  invisible. 
Often,  even  in  Christian  times,  has  Pompey's  surprise 
.been  repeated ;  often  it  has  been  said  that  without  a 
localizing,  a  dramatizing,  a  materializing  representation 
of  the  Unseen,  all  worship  would  be  impossible.  The 
reply  which  he  must,  at  least  for  the  moment,  have 
made  to  himself  was  that,  contrary  to  all  expectation, 
he  had  there  found  it  possible. 

It  was  natural  that  so  rude  a  shock  to  the  scruples 
of  the  Dews  as  Pompey's  entrance  of  the  Holy  of  Holies 
should  have  been  long  resented,  that  when  the  deadly 
strife  began  between  the  two  foremost  men  of  the 
Roman  world  they  should  have  joined  CaDsar  with  all 
his  vices  against  Pompey  with  all  his  virtues.  It  was 
natural,  though  less  excusable,  that  even  Christian 
vvriters  should   have  represented  the  calami  ties  which 

1  ovSev  iKuro,  Josephus,  D.  J.,  v.  ritual.  " Istorum  religio  sacrorum 
5,  5.     "Vacuum  sedeni,  mania  ar-     "a  splendore  hujus  Imperii,   grav- 

'  cana,"  Tac.    Hist.,  v.  A.      &ppt)Tov  "  itate  nominis  nostri,  majorum  in- 

axl  06,5^,  Dio  Cass.,  xxxvii.  1G.  "  Btitutis  abhorrebat"  (Pro  Flacco^ 

2  Sec   Cicero's   contempt  for   the  c.  28). 
•Jewish  a=  compared  with  the  Roman 


lect.  l.  pompey.  453 

afterwards  overtook  the  hero  of  the  East  as  a  Divine 
vengeance  for  this  intrusion.  Yet,  surely,  if  ever 
in  those  times  such  intrusion  were  deemed  admissible, 
it  was  to  be  forgiven  in  one  whose  clean  hands 1  and 
pure  heart,  compared  with  most  of  the  contemporary 
chiefs,  David  would  have  regarded  as  no  disqualification 
for  a  dweller  on  God's  Holy  Hill  —  in  one,  through 
whose  deep  and  serious  insight,  even  if  only  for  a 
moment,  into  the  significance  of  that  vacant  shrine, 
the  Gentile  world  received  a  thrill  of  sacred  awe  which 
it  never  lost,  and  the  Christian  world  may  receive  a 
lesson  which  it  has  often  sorely  needed. 

On  the  next  day,  with  the  same  highbred  courtesy 
that  marked  all  his  dealings,  like  that  which  distin- 
guished even  the  Pilate  and  the  Felix  of  a  later  day, 
he  gave  orders  to  purify  the  Temple  from  the  contam- 
ination which  he  knew  that  his  presence  there  must 
have  occasioned,  and  invested  with  the  Pontificate  the 
unfortunate  Hyrcanus,  "  destined  "  (if  we  may  here 
thus  apply  the  words  of  another  claimant  of  a  shadowy 
sceptre)  "  to  thirty  years  of  wandering  and  exile,  to  be 
"  the  victim  of  honors  more  galling  than  insults,  and 
"  of  hopes  that  make  the  heart  sick." 

With  the  rule  of  a  master  he  took  command  of  the 
whole  country.     The  chiefs  of  the  insurgents  Conquest  of 
were  beheaded.     The   Jewish    race  was    once Palestine- 
more    confined    within    the    narrow    limits    of   Judah, 
which  henceforth  takes  the  name  of  Judaea.     Gadara 2 

1  Modern  historians  have  not  been  speaking  of  Cato's   splendid  eulogy 

L»vorable   to  Pompey.     But  on   the  in   Lucan's   Pharsalia    "  as   a   pure 

^ereral    character    at   least    of    his  "  gem  of  rhetoric  without  one  flaw," 

earlier  years,  Arnold's  verdict  (Life  adds,  "and  in  my  opinion  not  very 

>:<f  Ccesar,  Encyc.  Metrop.,  ii.  p.  243)  "  far  from  historical  truth." 
bas  on  the  whole  not  been  reversed;         2  There  must  have  been  two  towns 

*nd   Macaulay   (Life,  i.  458),  after  called  Gadara.    One,  the  fortress  be- 


454  HEROD.  Lect.  I, 

was  made  over  to  its  townsman,  Pompey's  favorite 
freedman,  Demetrius.  To  all  the  outlying  towns  on 
the  coast  and  beyond  the  Jordan,  which  Simon  had 
subdued,  he  restored  their  independence.  The  ancient 
capital  of  Samaria,  which  John  Hyrcanus  had  de- 
stroyed, wras  rebuilt  by  Gabinius,  and  bore  his  name 
until  it  took  from  a  far  greater  Roman  the  title, 
winch  through  all  its  subsequent  changes  it  has  never 
lost,  in  Greek  "  Sebaste,"  in  Latin  "  Augusta,"  "  the 
"  city  of  Augustus."  The  unity  of  government  was 
broken  into  five  separate  councils  which  were  to  sit 
with  equal  power  at  Jerusalem,  Gadara,  Amathus, 
Jericho,  and  Sepphoris.  And  thus,  says  Josephus, 
one  might  suppose  with  bitter  irony,  "  they  passed 
"from  a  monarchy  to  an  aristocracy."1 

Meanwhile  the  Roman  citizens  witnessed  the  spec- 
Triumph  tacle  of  Pompey's  triumph  —  his  third  and 
d1  Pompey.  greatest  —  the  grandest  that  Rome  had  ever 
,^een.  First2  came  the  huge  placards,  with  the  enume- 
ration of  the  thousand  castles  and  nine  hundred  cities 
conquered,  the  eight  hundred  galleys  taken  from  the 
pirates,  the  thirty-nine  cities  re-founded.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  splendid  spoils,  and  amongst  them  the 
golden  vine  of  Palestine ;  then  the  mass  of  prisoners, 
who  added  a  peculiar  interest  to  the  procession,  by  ap- 
pearing not  as  slaves  in  chains,  but  each  in  his  national 
costume.  Immediately  in  front  of  the  Conqueror  him- 
self, in  his  jewelled  car,  surrounded  by  the  pictures  of 
his  exploits,  came  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-two  Cap- 
pond  the  Jordan  (Josephus,  A  nt. ,  xiii.  Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  7,  7;  Int.,  xii. 
11.1;  B.  /.,  i.  4,  2;  20,  3;  ii.  18,  1;  7,  4;  xiv.  4,  1;  xvii.  2,  4,  and  per- 
kv.  7,  3);  the  other,  on  the  seacoast  haps  the  same  as  Gezer. 
oetween  Joppa  and  A-h  lod  (Strabo,  1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  5,  3,  4. 
svi  29).  This  is  probably  the  birth-  2  Appian,  De  Bell.  MiUirid.,  253; 
olaee  of  Demetrius,  and  intended  in     Plutarch,  Pompey. 


Lect.  L.  FOUNDATION  01   THE   ROMAN  CHURCH.  455 

tive  Princes  of  the  East,  and  amongst  them  the  King 
of  Judrea.  Even  at  the  time  the  countrymen  of 
Pompey  selected  from  the  vast  variety  of  objects  the 
trophies  of  the  strange  city  and  people  of  whom  they 
had  heard  so  much  —  and  bestowed  upon  him  as  his 
especial  title  "  our  hero  of  Jerusalem."  1 

It  was  the  rare  exception,  the  result  of  the  rare 
humanity  of  the  conqueror,  that  on  reaching  the  fatal 
turn  in  the  Sacred  Way,  whence  the  triumphal  proces- 
sion ascended  the  Capitoline  Hill,  the  prisoners  were 
not  led  to  execution,  but  either  sent  back  to  their 
homes  or  remained  in  Koine  for  whatever  fortunes 
might  await  them. 

Amongst  the  train  of  the  inferior  captives  who  were 
thus  left  after  the  Triumph,  and  who,  on  re-  Foundation 
covering  their  liberty,  had  either  not  the  cfh*®h  Df 
means  or  the  inclination  to  return  to  their  clis-  Rome' 
tant  country,  was  the  large  band  of  Jewish  exiles,  to 
whom  was  assigned  a  district  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Tiber,  convenient  for  the  landing  of  merchandise  to  a 
people  whose  commercial  tendencies  were  now  develop- 
ing. 'This  singular  settlement,  receiving  constant  ac- 
cessions from  the  East,  became  the  wonder  of  the  Im- 
perial city,  with  its  separate  burial-places  copied  from 
the  rock-hewn  tombs  of  Palestine,  with  its  ostentatious 
observance,  even  in  the  heart  of  the  great  metropolis, 
of  the  day  of  rest — with  the  basket  and  bundle  of 
hay  which  marked  the  Jewish  peasant  wherever 2  he 
was  found ;  with  its  mysterious  power  of  fascinating 
the  proud  Roman  nobles  by  the  glimpses  which  it  gave 
of  a   better  world.      By   establishing  this  community 

1  Cicero,  Ep.  ad  Alt.,  ii.  9.  Sat.,  III.  14,  VI.  542;    Renan's  S. 

2  Philo,  Legalio  ad  Caium,  §  23;     Paul,  101-107;  Gratz,  iii.  124. 
Hor.,  Sat.,   I.  ix.   71,   72;   Juvenal, 


456  HEROD  Lect.  L. 

Pompey  was,  although  ho  knew  it  not,  the  founder  of 
the  Roman  Church. 

Amongst  the  more  illustrious  hostages  were  Aristo- 
Remnants  bulus,  his  uncle  Absalom,  and  his  children, 
moneana  It  will  be  our  endeavor  briefly  to  follow  the 
fates  of  these  last  remnants  of  the  Maccabsean  race, 
whose  spirit  still  showed  itself  in  their  unquenchable 
patriotism  and  their  headlong  resistance  against  the 
most  overwhelming  odds.  Alexander,  the  eldest  of 
the  sons  of  Aristobulus  —  who  had  married  a  daughter 
of  Hyrcanus,  and  thus  might  seem  to  represent  both 
branches  of  the  family  —  had  escaped  on  the  journey 
to  Rome,  and  for  a  time  defended  himself  in  the  family 
fortress  of  Alexandreum,  against  Gabinius  and  the 
reckless  chief  whose  military  capacity  was  first  re- 
vealed on  this  excursion,  Antony.  It  was  taken,  and 
the  mountain  fastnesses  which  had  been  erected  by  the 
Asmonean 1  Princes  —  "  the  haunts  of  the  robbers  "  — 
"  the  strongholds  of  the  tyrants,"  as  they  are  called 
by  the  Roman  writers  —  were  all  dismantled.  In  a 
few  months,  however,2  Aristobulus  himself, 
with  his  son  Antigonus,  effected  his  flight  from 
Rome,  and  fled,  as  if  by  instinct,  to  those  same  castles, 
which,  even  in  their  ruined  state,  were  as  the  nests  of 
that  hunted  race.  The  conflict  revived  in  the  famous 
scenes  of  Central  Palestine.  The  Roman  army,  which 
had  entrenched  itself  in  the  world-old  sanctuary3  of 
Gerizim,  under  the  shelter  of  the  friendly  Samaritans, 
broke  out  and  finally  overpowered  the  insurgents  on 
the  slopes  of  Tabor,  the  field  of  so  many  victories  and 
defeats  from  Barak  downwards  to  Napoleon. 

For  a  moment,  by  joining  the  cause  of  Caesar,  under 

1  Strabo,  xvi.  37,  40.  8  Joscphus,  Ant.,  xiv.  6,  2,  8. 

1  Joscphus,  Ant.,  xiv.  (i,  1. 


Lect.  L.       REMNANTS  OF  THE  ASMONEANS-  457 

whose  standard  some  of  their  countrymen  fought  at 
Pharsalia,  there  seemed  a  chance  for  the  Jewish  Princes 
to  retrieve  their  fortunes.  But  amidst  their  obscure 
entanglement  in  the  struggle  between  the  two  mighty 
combatants  for  the  empire  of  the  world,  Aris- 

b  c  49 

tobulus,  by  poison,  Alexander,  by  decapitation, 
were  removed  from  the  scene.  There  now  remained 
Antigonus  and  his  sister  Alexandra  and  the  two  chil- 
dren of  Alexander,  Aristobulus  and  Miriam  or  Mary  — 
better  known  by  the  more  lengthened  Grecian  form  of 
Mariamne.  Round  these  princes  and  princesses  re- 
volves the  tragedy  in  which  the  Asmonean  dynasty 
finally  disappeared.  But  in  order  to  catch  the  thread 
of  that  intricate  plot  we  must  introduce  the  new  char- 
acter who  appears  on  the  scene.  Throughout  the 
struggles  which  we  have  traversed  it  is  easy  to  discern 
the  tortuous  and  ambitious  policy  of  the  crafty  Idu- 
msean  Antipater,  who  had  made  himself  indispensable 
alike  to  the  feeble  Priest  Hyrcanus  and  to  the  powerful 
chiefs  of  the  Roman  Republic.  But  Antipater  himself 
now  makes  way  for  a  name  far  more  renowed  in  his- 
tory, far  more  interesting  in  itself — his  son 
Herod,  whether  by  accident  or  design,  sur- 
named  the  Great.1  In  the  darker  traditions  of  the  Tal- 
mud, he  was  known  only  as  "  the  slave  2  of  "  King 
"  Jannreus ;  "  and  the  inferiority  of  his  lineage  was  a 
constant   byword   of  reproach   amongst   the   members 

1  Derenbourg,  146,  151.  Accord-  bers.  The  story  receives  some  con- 
ing to  the  story  of  Christian  writers  firmation  from  Herod's  attentions  to 
(Eus.,  H.  E.,i.  6,  7;  Justin,  Tnjpho,  Ascalon  (Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  21,  11), 
'272,  especially  Epiph.,  Hcer.,  i.  20),  but  is  incompatible  with  the  gen- 
Herod's  grandfather,  himself  Herod,  eral  account  of  the  family  given  by 
was  a  slave  in  the  temple  of  Ascalon,  Josephus  (Ant.,  xiv.  1,  3;  B.  «/.,  i. 
coo  poor  to  ransom  his  son  Antipater  6,  2). 

vhen  carried  off  by  Idumaean  rob-         2  Josephus,  B.J.,i.  16,4;  i.  24,  3. 
58 


458  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

of  the  Asmoncan  family,  in  whose  eyes  his  sisters 
were  fit  for  nothing  but  seamstresses,  his  brothers  for1 
nothing  but  village  schoolmasters.  In  the  next  gener- 
ation, when  his  power,  on  one  side,  and  his  crimes,  on 
the  other,  had  drawn  a  halo  or  a  cloud  round  his  head, 
the  descent  of  Herod  was  alternately  glorified 
or  debased.  In  the  annals  of  his  secretary, 
Nicolas  of  Damascus,  he  was  represented  as  a  scion,  not 
of  the  despised  and  hated  Eclomites,  but  of  a  noble 
Judaean  family  amongst  the  Babylonian  exiles.  Nor 
was  this  closer  kinship  altogether  disclaimed  by  the 
Jews  themselves.  "  Thou  art  our  brother,"  they  con- 
descended to  say  to  one  of  the  sons  of  Herod,  who 
wept  over  his  alien  origin.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to 
go  beyond  the  historical  facts.  Whether  by  race  or 
education  he  belonged  to  that  Edomite  tribe,  which, 
with  singular  tenacity,  had  retained  the  characteristics 
of  its  first  father  Esau  through  the  long  years  which 
had  elapsed  since,  in  the  patriarchal  traditions,  the  two 
brothers  had  parted  at  the  Cave  of  Machpelah.  In 
their  wild  nomadic  customs,  in  their  mountain  war- 
fare—  clinging  like  eagles  to  their  caverned  fastnesses, 
unless  when  they  descended  for  a  foray  on  their  more 
civilized  neighbors  —  they  were  hardly  distinguishable 
from  a  Bedouin  tribe  ;  yet,  with  that  sense  of  injured 
kinship  which  breeds  the  deadliest  animosities,  they 
maintained  a  defiant  claim  to  hang  on  the  outskirts 
and  force  themselves  on  the  notice  of  the  people  of 
Israel;  sheltering  the  revolted  princes  of  Judah  in 
their  secluded  glens;  hounding  on  the  enemies  of 
Jerusalem  in  the  hour  of  her  sorest  need;  claiming 
complete  possession  of  the  whole  country  for  their  own, 
as  if  by  the  elder  brother's  right,  which  the  supplanter 

1  Comp.  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  8,  1;   xx.  8,  7. 


Lect.  L. 


HIS  RISE.  459 


had  stolen  from  them.  If  for  a  moment  they  had 
bowed  beneath  the  sway  of  the  first  Hyrcanus,  and 
consented  to  reunite  themselves  with  the  common 
stock  of  Abraham  by  the  rite  of  circumcision,  it  was 
that  "  they  might  once  again  have  dominion  and  break 
"  their  brother's  yoke  from  off  their  necks." 

The  first  Antipater  secured  for  himself  the  place  of 
a  vassal  prince  under  Alexander  Jannasus ;  the  B  c  47- 
second,  as  we  have  seen,  became  the  master  of  Hls  nse- 
the  phantom  Priest  Hyrcanus,  and,  alternately  siding 
with  each  of  the  two  parties  which  divided  the  Roman 
world,  mounted,  through  the  favor  first  of  Pompey 
and  then  of  Caesar,  to  the  high  office  of  the  Roman 
Procurator  of  Judaea.  And  now  his  son  inherits  the 
traditions  of  his  house  and  nation,  and  the  threads  of 
that  subtle  influence  by  which  Rome  henceforth  as- 
sumed the  control  of  Judaea.  Herod  was  hardly  more 
than  a  boy  —  but  fifteen1  years  of  age  —  when  he  was 
brought  forward  by  his  father  into  public  life.  Already 
when  he  was  a  child  going  to  school,  his  future  great- 
ness 2  had  been  predicted  by  an  ascetic  seer  from  the 
Essenian  settlement,  who  called  him  "  King  of  the 
"Jews."  The  child  thought  that  Menahem  was  in 
jest ;  but  the  prophet  smacked  the  little  boy  on  the 
back,  and  charged  him  to  remember  these  blows,  as  a 
signal  that  he  had  foretold  to  him  his  future 3  destiny 
—  what  he  might  be,  and  what,  unfortunately,  he  be- 
came. Like  a  true  descendant  of  Esau,  he  was  "  a 
"  man  of  the  field,  a  mighty  hunter."  He  was  re- 
nowned   for  his   horsemanship.     On    one    day  he  was 

1  It  has  been  conjectured  to  read  iravrdtraa-iv    ovn  —  ko/xlStj  vkov)  shows 

twenty-five  for  fifteen.     But  the  re-  that  he  meant  fifteen, 
mark    of    Josephus,    twice   repeated         2  B.  J.,  i.  20,  4. 
(Ant.,  xiv.   9,   2  ;    B.  J.,  i.  10,  4),         8  Ant.,  xv.  10,  0, 
hat  he  was  exceedingly  young  (vi<p 


460  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

known  to  have  had  such  sport  as  to  have  killed  no  less 
than  forty  of  the  game  of  those  parts  —  bears,  stags, 
and  wild  asses.  In  the  Arab  exercises  of  the  jerreed, 
or  throwing  the  lance,  in  the  archery  of  the  ancient 
Edomites,  he  was  the  wonder  of  his  generation.  He 
had  a  splendid  presence.  His  fine  black  hair,  on  which 
he  prided  himself,  and  which  when  it  turned  gray  was 
dyed,1  to  keep  up  the  appearance  of  youth,  was  magnif- 
icently dressed.  On  one  occasion,  when  he  sprang  out 
of  a  bath  where  assassins  had  surprised  him,  even  his 
naked  figure  was  so  majestic2  that  they  fled  before  him. 
Nor  was  he  destitute  of  noble  qualities,  however  much 
obscured  by  the  violence  of  the  age,  and  by  the  furious, 
almost  frenzied,  cruelty  which  despotic  power  breeds 
in  Eastern  potentates.  There  was  a  greatness  of  soul 
which  might  have  raised  him  above  the  petty  intrigu- 
ers by  whom  he  was  surrounded.  His  family  affections 
were  deep  and  strong.  In  that  time  of  general  dissolu- 
tion of  domestic  ties  it  is  refreshing  to  witness  the  al- 
most extravagant  tenderness  with  which,  on  the  plain 
of  Sharon,  he  founded,  in  the  fervor  of  his  filial  love, 
the  city  of  "  Antipatris ;  "  to  the  citadel  above  Jericho3 
he  gave  the  name  of  his  Arabian  mother  Cypros  ;  to 
one  of  the  towers  of  Jerusalem,  and  to  a  fortress,  in  the 
valley  which  still  retains  the  name,  looking  down  to 
the  Jordan,  he  left  the  privilege  of  commemorating  his 
beloved  and  devoted4  brother  Phasael.  In  the  lucid 
intervals  of  the  darker  days  which  beset  the  close  of 
his  career,  nothing  can  be  more  pathetic  than  his  re- 
morse for  his  domestic  crimes,  nothing  more  genuine 
than  his  tears  of  affection  for  his  grandchildren. 

1  Josepbus,  Ant.,  xvi.  8,  1;  B.  J.,        *  For  the   devotion  of   Herod   to 
',   24,  7;  Ant.,  xiv.  9,  4.  Phasael,   see  Josephus,  Ant.,  x.  16, 

2  Ant.,  xiv.  15,  13.  5,  2;  of  Phasael  to  Herod,  Ibid.,  xiv. 
■  Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  21,  9;  Ant.,     13,  10;  B.  J.,  i.  10,  5. 

tiv.  7,  3. 


Lect.  l.  his  rise.  461 

Nor  were  there  wanting  signs  of  a  higher  culture 
than  any  Judosan  Prince  had  shown  since  the  time  of 
Solomon.  He  had  an  absolute  passion  for  philosophy 
and  history,  and  used  to  say  that  there  could  be  noth- 
ing more  useful  or  politic  for  a  king  than  the  investi- 
gation of  the  great  events  of  the  past.  He  engaged 
for  his  private  secretary  Nicolas  of  Damascus,  one  of 
the  most  accomplished  scholars1  of  the  age,  and  author 
of  a  universal  history  in  144  books ;  and  on  his  long 
voyages  to  and  from  Rome,  he  loved  to  while  away  the 
hours  by  conversations  on  these  subjects  with  His  cultiva. 
Nicolas,  whom  for  this  purpose  he  took  with  tion# 
him  on  board  of  the  same  ship.  One  example  of  his 
own  philosophic  sentiment  is  preserved  in  the  speech 
which  Josephus  ascribes  to  him,  endeavoring  to  dispel 
the  superstitious  panic2  occasioned  by  an  earthquake. 
How  completely,  too,  he  entered  into  the  glories  of 
Greek  and  Roman  art  will  appear  as  we  proceed,  from 
the  monuments  which  place  him  in  the  first  rank  of 
the  masters  of  architecture  in  that  great  age  of  build- 
ing. His  contemporaries  recognized  in  him  one  of 
those  rare  princely  characters,  who  take  a  delight  in 
beneficence,  and  in  its  largest  possible  scope.  Not 
only  in  Palestine  itself,  but  in  all  the  cities  of  Asia  and 
of  Greece,  which  needed  generous  assistance,  he  freely 
gave  it.  At  Antioch  he  left  his  mark  in  the  polished 3 
marble  pavement  of  the  public  square,  and  in  the  clois- 
ter which  surrounded  it.  In  many  of  the  cities  of 
Syria  and  Asia  Minor  he  founded  places  for  athletic 
exercises,  aqueducts,  baths,  fountains,  and  (in  the  mod- 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  12,  6;  xiv.     Fragments  o/Valesius,  quoted  in  Clin- 
1,  3;  4,  3;   6,  4;  xvi.;  x.  7,  1;  xiii.     ton's  Fasti  Hellenici,  A.  d.  16. 
$,  2;  c.Ap.,  ii.  7  (see  Ewald,  v.  417) ;         2  Josephus,  B.  /.,  i.  29,  4. 

8  Ibid.,  i.,  xxi.  11,  12. 


462  HEROD.  I. ect.  L. 

ern  fashion  of  philanthropy)  annexed  to  them  parks 
and  gardens  for  public  recreation.  With  a  toleration 
which  seems  beyond  his  time,  but  which  kindles  an 
■admiration  even  in  the  Jewish  historian,  he  repaired 
the  Temple  of  Apollo  at  Rhodes,  and  settled  a  perma- 
nent endowment  on  the  games  of  Olympia,  the  chief 
surviving  relic  of  Grecian  grandeur,  which  he  had  vis- 
ited on  his  way  to  Rome. 

This  was  the  man  who  now  stepped  into  the  fore- 
most place  of  the  Jewish  history.  It  might  have 
seemed  as  if  the  cry  of  Esau  were  to  be  again  repeated : 
"  Hast  thou  but  one  blessing  ?  Bless  me,  even  me 
"  also,  0  my  father." 

A  chief  of  such  largeness  of  mind,  such  generosity  of 
disposition,  such  power  of  command,  was  well  suited  to 
take  the  lead  in  this  distracted  nation.  Viewed  as  we 
now  view  him,  through  the  blood-stained  atmosphere 
of  his  later  life,  even  the  dubious  eulogies  of  Josephus 
are  difficult  to  understand.  But  viewed  in  the  light  of 
the  nobleness  of  his  early  youth,  and  through  the 
magnificence  of  his  public  works,  it  was  natural  that  — 
as  in  the  case  of  our  own"  Henry  VIII.  —  the  judgment 
of  his  contemporaries  should  have  differed  from  that  of 
posterity,  that  he  should  have  been  invested  with  some- 
thing of  a  sacred  character,  as  a  dreamer  of  prophetic 
dreams,  a  special  favorite  of  Divine  Providence,1  and 
that  a  large  party  in  the  community  should  have  borne 
his  name  as  their  most  cherished  badge,  and  regarded 
him  as  the  nearest  likeness  which  that  age  afforded  to 
the  Anointed  Prince 2  or  Priest  of  the  house  of  David, 
who  had  been  expected  by  the  earlier  Prophets. 

The  first  scene  on  which  Herod  appears  is  full  of  in- 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  15,  12,  13.       Westcott  on  the  Herodians,  Diet,  of 
9  See  the  quotations  in  Professor     Bible,  i.  796. 


lkct.  l.  his  kise.  463 

struction.  Boy  as  he  was,  his  father  had  appointed 
him  to  take  charge  of  Galilee ;  which  partly  h;s  ex- 
from  its  "  border  "  character,  whence  it  derived  Galilee. 
its  name,  partly  from  the  physical  peculiarities  of  its 
deeply-sunken  lake,  wild  glens,  and  cavernous  hills,  had 
become  the  refuge  of  the  high-spirited  insurgents,  who 
in  semi- civilized  countries  insensibly  acquire  both  the 
reputation  and  the  character  of  bandits  —  the  High- 
lands, the  Asturias,  the  Abruzzi  of  Palestine.  The 
young  "  Lord  of  the  Marches,"  fired  with  the  same 
spirit,  partly  politic  and  partly  philanthropic,  which 
had  conferred  such  glory  on  Pompey  and  Augustus  in 
their  repression  of  the  pirates  of  the  Mediterranean 
and  the  brigands  of  Italy,  determined  to  crush  those 
lawless  robbers  of  his  own  country. 

In  Syria  his  fame  rose  to  the  highest  pitch.  In  vil- 
lages on  the  Lebanon  his  name  was  the  burden  of  pop- 
ular ballads,  as  their  Heaven-sent  deliverer  from  the 
incursions  of  the  Galilean  Highlanders.  But  in  Judaea 
these  acts  of  summary  justice  wore  another  aspect. 
The  chief  of  the  robber  band,  Hezekiah,  was,  probably, 
in  the  eyes  of  the  residents  at  Jerusalem  —  perhaps, 
was  in  reality  —  the  patriot,  the  Tell  of  his  time,  as  he 
certainly  was  the  father  of  a  gallant  family  of  sons, 
who  were  to  play  a  like  part  hereafter. 

Jerusalem  was  filled  with  the  echoes  of  these  Gali- 
lean exploits.  On  the  one  hand,  the  messen-  B  c  47 
gers  of  Herod's  victories  vied  with  each  other  Hlstnal 
in 1  their  reports,  and  in  awakening  the  public  appre- 
hension of  his  possible  designs  on  the  monarchy.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  mothers  of  the  victims  of  his  zeal 
nurried  up  to  the  capital,  and  every  time  that  the 
Priest-King  Hyrcanus  appeared  in  the  Temple  Court 

1  Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  10,  6. 


464  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

besot  him  with  entreaties  not  to  allow  the  murder  of 
their  children  untried  and  unconvicted  to  pass  unchal- 
lenged. Reluctantly  the  feeble  Prince  summoned  the 
son  of  his  patron  to  appear  before  the  Council  of  the 
Sanhedrin,1  which  now  for  the  first  time  appears  in 
Jewish  history.  It  sat,  probably,  now,  as  afterwards, 
in  the  Hall  of  Gazith,  or  Squares,  so  called  from  the 
hewn,  square  stones  of  its  pavement.2  The  royal  Pon- 
tiff was  present,  and  the  chief  teachers  of  the  period. 
The  legendary  account  of  the  scene,  although  disguised 
under  wrong  names  and  dates,  is  one  of  the  very  few 
notices  which  the  Talmudic3  traditions  take  of  the 
eventful  course  of  Herod's  life.  "  The  slave  of  the 
"  king;  of  Judah  "  said  the  Rabbinical  tale,  "  had  com- 
"mitted  a  murder."  The  Sanhedrin  summoned  the 
Kins:  to  answer  for  the  crimes  of  his  slave.  "  If  the 
"ox  gore  any  one," 4  said  the  interpreters  of  the  law 
to  the  King,  "  the  owner  of  the  ox  shall  be  responsible 
"for  the  ox."  The  King  seated  himself  before  them. 
"  Rise,"  said  the  Judge.  "  Thou  standest6  not  before 
"  us,  but  before  Him  who  commanded  and  the  world 
"  was  created."  The  King  appealed  from  the  Judge 
to  his  colleagues.  The  Judge  turned  to  the  right  hand 
and  to  the  left,  and  his  colleagues  were  silent.  Then 
said  the  Judge  :  "You  are  sunk  in  your  own  thoughts. 
"God,. who  knows  your  thoughts,  will  punish  you  for 
"  your  timidity."  The  Angel  Gabriel  smote  them  and 
they  died. 

It  is  instructive  to  turn  to  the  actual  scene  of  which 
this  is  the  distorted  version.     It  was  indeed  a  splendid 

1  See  Lecture  XLVIII.  fearless  judge  Simon  the  son  of  She- 

2  Mishna,    Yoma,   25  ;   Sanhedrin,     tach. 

19.  *  Ex.  xxi.  28. 

8  Derenbourg,  147.     The  king  in         5  Deut.  xix.  17. 
this  story  is  made  Jannseus,  and  the 


Lect.  L.  HIS  RISE.  465 

apparition,  but  not  of  the  Angel  Gabriel,  that  struck  the 
wise  Councillors  dumb.  When  Herod  was  summoned 
before  them  for  the  murder  of  the  Galileans,  instead  of 
a  solitary  suppliant,  clothed  in  black,  with  his  hair 
combed  clown,1  and  his  manner  submissive,  such  as 
they  expected  to  see,  there  came  a  superb  youth,  in 
royal  purple,  his  curls  dressed  out  in  the  very  height 
of  aristocratic  fashion,  surrounded  by  a  guard  of  sol- 
diers, and  holding  in  his  hand  the  commendatory  let- 
ters of  Sextus  Caesar,  the  Governor  of  Syria,  the  cousin 
of  the  great  Julius.  The  two  chiefs  of  the  Sanheclrin 
at  that  juncture  were  Abtalion 2  and  Shemaiah.  It 
was  Abtalion,  doubtless,  who  counselled  silence.  His 
maxim  had  always  been :  "  Be  circumspect  in  your 
"words."  But  Shemaiah  rose  in  his  place  and  warned 
them  that  to  overlook  such  a  defiance  of  the  law  would 
be  to  insure  their  own  ruin.  For  a  moment  they 
wavered.  But,  warned  by  Hyrcanus,  Herod  escaped, 
and  years  afterwards  lived  to  prove  the  truth  of  She- 
maiah's  warning,  lived  to  sweep  away  the  vacillating 
Council,  though  at  the  same  time  rewarding  the  pru- 
dence of  Abtalion,  if  not  the  courage  of  Shemaiah. 

The  story  well  illustrates  the  waning  of  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  nation  before  the  rise  of  the  new  dy- 
nasty, backed  as  it  was  by  all  the  power  of  Rome.  It 
was  to  Herod  that  the  sceptre  was  destined  to  pass. 

Antipater,  his  father,  indeed,  long  held  Hyrcanus  in 
his  grasp.     But  he  at  last  fell  a  victim  to  the  Death  of 

Antipater. 

struggles  of  his  puppet  to   escape  from   mm,  b.  c.  43. 
and  the  two  brothers  Phasael  and  Herod  were  left  to 
maintain  their  own  cause.     At  once  Herod  en-  Contest  with 

.         .  ,  Aristobulus. 

deavored  to  spring  into  his  father  s  place  by  a  b.  c.  42. 
stroke,  which,  but  for  the  jealousies  of  his  own  house- 

1  Josephus,  Ant,  xiv.  9,  3-5.  2  Derenbourg,  117,  148. 

59 


466  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

hold,  would  have  probably  been  crowned  with  complete 
success. 

He  had  already  in  his  early  years  married  an  Idu- 
mgean  wife,  Doris,  by  whom  he  had  a  son,  whom  he 
named  after  his  father  Antipater  —  a  child  now,  but 
destined  to  grow  up  into  the  evil  genius  of  his  house. 
He  now  determined  on  a  higher  alliance.  The  beauti- 
ful and  high-spirited  Mariamne  united  in  herself  the * 
claims  of  both  the  rival  Asmonean  princes.  She  was 
the  granddaughter  alike  of  Hyrcanus  and  of  Aristo- 
bulus. 

From  this  time  Hyrcanus  became  the  fast  friend  of 
Herod,  crowned  with  garlands  whenever  he  appeared, 
pleading 2  his  cause  before  the  Roman  Triumvir.  Aris- 
tobulus,  however,  had  left  behind  him  not  only  Mari- 
amne, but  a  passionate  and  ambitious  son,  Antigonus, 
who  could  not  see  without  a  struggle  the  kingdom  pass 
away  even  to  his  own  sister's  husband.  There  was  one 
foreign  ally  and  one  only  whom  he  could  invoke 
against  the  great  Republic  of  the  West.  It  was  the 
rising  kingdom  of  the  East  —  the  Parthian  monarchy, 
which  offered  to  play  the  same  part  for  Juclaaa  against 
Rome  that  Egypt  had  formerly  played  against  Assyria. 
There  seemed  to  be  almost  a  natural  affinity  between 
them  from  the  fresh  recollection  of  the*  campaign  of 
Crassus.  Crassus.  Jerusalem  still  suffered  under  the 
b.  c.  54.  joss  0f  -£s  accunmia,ted  treasures,  which  the 
rapacious  Roman,  in  spite  of  the  most  solemn  adjura- 
tions, had  carried  off.  from 3  its  Temple.  Parthia  still 
rejoiced  in  the  triumph  which  its  armies  had  won  over 
The  Parthi-  his  scattered  host  on  the  plains  of  Haran,  the 
b.  c.  40.      ancient  cradle   of  the  Jewish  race.     By  force 

2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  12,  2.  8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  7,  1,  2;  B.J., 

2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  12,  2;  13,  1.     i.  8,  8. 


Lect.  l.  escape  from  antigonus.  467 

and  by  fraud  Hyrcanus  and  Phasael  were  induced  to 
give  themselves  into  the  hands  of  the  Parthian  general, 
and  were  hurried  away  into  the '  far  East.  Phasael 
died  partly  by  his  own  desperate  act,  when  he  saw 
that  he  was  doomed,  partly  by  the  treachery  of  Antig- 
onus, but  not  without  a  glow  of  delight  on  hearing 
that  his  beloved  brother  had  escaped.  The  fate  of 
Hyrcanus  was  singularly  instructive.  To  take  the  life 
of  so  insignificant  a  creature  was  not  within  the  range 
of  ambition  of  Antigonus.  All  that  was  needed  was 
to  debar  him  from  the  Priesthood.  For  this  the 
slightest  bodily  defect  or  malformation  was  a  sufficient 
disqualification.  The  nephew  sprang  upon  the  uncle, 
and  with  his  own x  teeth  gnawed  off  the  ears  of  the 
harmless  Pontiff,  and  left  him  in  that  mutilated  condi- 
tion in  the  Parthian  court.  This  strange  physical  dep- 
osition from  a  spiritual  office  in  part  succeeded,  in 
part  failed  of  its  purpose. 

In  those  remote  regions,  the  prestige  of  one  who 
had  once  been  chief  of  the  Jewish  nation  was  not 
easily  broken.  Hyrcanus,  after  receiving  every  cour- 
tesy from  the  Parthian  king,  was  allowed  to  move  to 
the  vast  colony  of  his  countrymen  who  still  inhabited 
Babylon.2  By  them  he  was  hailed  at  once  as  High 
Priest  and  King,  and  loaded  with  honors,  which  he 
gratefully  accepted.  What  his  fate  was  to  be  in  Je- 
rusalem we  shall  presently  see. 

Meanwhile  the  plot  in  Palestine  had  deeply  thickened. 
On  the  day  that  Hyrcanus  and  Phasael  had  B  c  40 
been   carried  off  to  Parthia,  Herod    escaped,  frs0cn*pe 
with   all   the  members  of  his  family  that   he  Antis°™s- 
30uld  collect,  and  hurried  into  his  native  hills  in  the 
south  of  Judaea.     "  It  would  have  moved  the  hardest 

1  Joseplius,  B.  /.,  i.  13,  9.  2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  2,  2. 


468  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

"of  hearts,"  says  the  historian,  "to  have  seen  that 
"flight"  —  his  aged  mother  —  his  youngest  brother  — 
—  his  clever  sister  -»-  his  betrothed  bride,  with  her  still 
more  sagacious  mother  —  the  small  children  of  his 
earlier  marriage.  Never  was  that  high  spirit  so  nearly 
broken.  It  was  a  march  which  he  never  forgot.  Years 
afterwards  he  built  for  himself  and  his  dynasty  a  for- 
tress and  burial-place  bearing  his  name,  and  corre- 
sponding to  those  of  which  the  Asmonean  princes  had 
set  the  example  —  the  Herodium  —  on  the  square  sum- 
mit of  the  commanding  height  at  the  foot  of  which  he 
had  gained  the  success  over  his  pursuers  which  secured 
his  safety.1  From  thence  he  took  refuge  in  the  almost 
inaccessible  stronghold  of  the  ancient  kings  of  Judah, 
afterwards  destined  to  be  the  last  fastness  of  the  ex- 
piring people  —  Masada,  by  the  Dead  Sea.  But  even 
Masada  —  even  Petra,  to  which  he  next  fled,  was  not 
secure.  Regardless  of  the  blandishments  of  Cleopatra 
at  Alexandria,  regardless  of  the  storms  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean, he  halted  not  till  he  reached  Rome  and  laid  his 
grievances  before  his  first  patron  Antony. 

It  was  the  fatal  turning-point  of  his  life.  The  prize 
of  the  Jewish  monarchy  was  now  unquestionably  and 
for  the  first  time  offered  to  him  by  Antony  and  Oc- 
tavianus  Caesar.  He  entered  the  senate  as  the  rightful 
He  obtains  advocate  of  the  young  Prince  Aristobulus. 
aom.1D8  He  left  it  walking  between  the  two  Triumvirs, 
as  "  King  of  the  Jews."  It  was  still  after  many  vicissi- 
tudes and  hair-breadth  escapes  that,  with  the  assistance 
of  the  Roman  troops,  commanded  by  Sosius,  he  stormed 
Jerusalem.  It  was  the  anniversary  of  the  same  day  as 
Capture  of  that  on  which,  twenty-five  years  before,  Pom- 
•i.  c.  37.  '    pey  bad  entered  the  Temple,  and  it  only  par- 

1  Joscphus,  Ant.,  xiv.  13,  8. 


Lect.  l.  king  of  the  JEWS.  469 

tially  escaped  the  horrors  of  the  same  desperate  re- 
sistance and  the  same  ruthless  massacre  which  has  been 
the  peculiar  fate  of  almost  every  capture  of  Jerusalem, 
from  Nebuchadnezzar  down  to  Godfrey.  But  the  no- 
blest parts  of  Herod's  finer  nature  were  called  forth. 
With  a  spirit  worthy  of  Henry  the  Fourth  of  France, 
he  exclaimed :  "  The  dominion  of  the  whole  civilized 
u  world  would  not  compensate  to  me  for  the  destruction 
"  of  my  subjects,"  x  and  he  actually  bought  off  the  ra- 
pacious Roman  soldiers  out  of  his  own  personal  munif- 
icence. 

These  brighter  traits  were  now  rapidly  merged  in 
the  darkening  shadows  of  his  later  career.  The  fol- 
lowers of  Antigonus  —  including,  according  to  the 
Jewish  tradition,  the  whole  teaching  body  of  the  na- 
tion —  Herod  pursued  to  death  with  a  vindictiveness 
which  he  had  learned  only  too  well  in  the  school  of 
his  friends  the  Roman  triumvirs.  Of  the  whole  of 
that  council  which  had  sat  in  judgment  on  his  youth- 
ful excesses  in  Galilee,  three  only  are  said  to  have  es- 
caped —  the  prudent  Abtalion,2  the  courageous  She- 
maiah,  and  the  son  of  Babas,3  not,  however,  without 
the  loss  of  his  eyesight.  Even  the  coffins  of  the  dead 
were  searched 4  to  see  that  no  living  enemy  might 
escape  the  vigilant  persecutor.  The  proud  spirit  of 
Antigonus  gave  way  under  this  overwhelming  disaster. 
He  came  down  from  his  lofty  tower,  and  fell  at  the 
feet  of  Sosius  in  an  agony  of  tears.  The  hard-hearted 
Roman,  not  touched  by  the  disastrous  misery  of  the 
gallant   Prince,   burst   into  roars 5  of  brutal   laughter, 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  16,  3;  B.J.,        i  Comp.  Dio  Cass.,  xlix.  22;  Plut, 
l.  17,  18.  Ant.,  34. 

2  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  1,  1  (Pollio).         5  B.  J.,  i.  18,  2. 
8  Derenbounr,  152. 


470  HEKOD.  Lect   L 

called  him  in  ridicule  by  the  name  of  the  Grecian 
maiden  Antigone,  and  hurried  him  off  in  chains  to  An- 
tony at  Antioch.  Antigonus  was  in  the  hands  of  those 
who  knew  neither  justice  nor  mercy.  A  bribe  from 
Herod  to  Antony  extinguished  the  last  spark  of  com- 
passion. So  strong  was  felt  to  be  the  attachment  of 
the  Jewish  nation  to  the  Maccabaean  race,  whilst  any 
remained  bearing  the  royal  name,  that,  regardless  of 
the  scruple  which  had  hitherto  withheld  even  the  fierc 
est  of  the  Roman  generals  from  thus  trampling  on  a 
fallen  king,  the  unfortunate  Antigonus  was  lashed  to  a 
stake  like  a  convicted  criminal,  scourged  by  the  rods 
of  the  relentless  lictors,  and  ruthlessly  beheaded  by 
the  axe  of  their  fasces.1  With  a  Mattathias  the  As- 
monean  dynasty  began,  with  a  Mattathias  it  ended. 
Coins2  still  exist  bearing  the  Hebrew  name  for  his 
office  of  High  Priest,  and  the  Greek  name  of  his  royal 
dignity  ;  whilst  on  medals  struck  by  Sosius  at  Zacyn- 
thus  to  commemorate  his  victory,  for  the  first  time, 
appears  the  well-known  melancholy  figure  of  Judaea3 
captive,  with  her  head  resting  on  her  hands,  and  be- 
side her  crouches  the  form  of  her  last  native  king, 
stripped  and  bound  in  preparation  for  his  miserable 
end. 

Yet  the  Maccabeean  family  was  not  extinct.  There 
still  remained  Hyrcanus,  the  original  friend  of  Herod 
and  Herod's  father,  and  Aristobulus  and  Mariamne,  the 
two  children  of  Aristobulus  the  king.  We  will  trace 
each  of  these  to  their  end.  Whether  from  policy  or 
old  affection,  Herod,  now  seated  on  the  throne  of 
Judrea,  invited  Hyrcanus  from  his  honorable  retreat  in 
Babylonia  to  the  troubled  scene   at  Jerusalem.     Hyr- 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  1,  2  (quoting         2  Maddcn's  Jewish  Coins,  77-79. 
Strabo).  8  In  the  British  Museum. 


Lect.  l.  king  of  the  jews.  47] 

canus  was  to  share  the  regal  dignity  with  him,  to  take 
precedence  of  him  —  was  called  "  his  father  "  —  en- 
joyed every  outward  privilege  which  was  his  before, 
except  only  the  High  Priesthood,  from  which  he  was 
excluded  by  the  extreme  punctiliousness  that,  amidst 
all  the  scandalous  vices  of  the  time,  still  shrank  from 
nominating  a  pontiff  with  the  almost  imperceptible 
blemish  inflicted  by   the  teeth  of  Antkronus.  b.  c.  36. 

TT  ?  Priesthood 

For  this  high  office,  Herod  summoned  a  Jewish  of  Hananei. 
exile,  an  ancient  friend  of  his  own,  of  unquestionably 
priestly  descent  —  Hananei,  from  Babylon.  But  this  at 
once  provoked  a  new  feud.  However  much  the  royal 
dignity  might  be  lost  to  the  Asmonean  house,  yet 
there  was  no  .reason  why  the  Priesthood,  for  which 
Hyrcanus  was  thus  incapacitated,  should  not  priesthood 
be  continued  in  their  line ;  and  there  was  at  buiJin." 
hand  for  this  purpose  Aristobulus,  the  mater- 
nal grandson  of  Hyrcanus  and  brother  of  Mariamne, 
whom  Herod  had,  shortly  before  his  final  success, 
married  at  Samaria,  the  city  which  the  Romans  had 
founded  anew,  and  which  was  henceforth  one  of 
Herod's  chief  resorts.  It  was  as  if  the  majestic  beauty 
which  had  distinguished  the  Maccabaean  family  from 
Judas  downwards  reached  its  climax  in  this  brothei 
and  sister.  And  their  mother  Alexandra  exhibited  not 
less  the  courage  and  the  craft  which  had  been  so  con- 
spicuous in  Jonathan  and  the  first  Hyrcanus.  She 
was  "the  wisest  woman,"  so  Herod  thought,  in  his 
whole  court,  the  one  to  whose  opinion  he  most  de- 
ferred. Both  she  and  her  daughter  were  indignant 
that  the  charming  boy,  who  was  now  the  sole  repre- 
sentative of  their  house  in  coming  years,  should  be 
kept  out  of  the  Priesthood  by  a  stranger ;  and,  partly 
by  remonstrances,  partly  by  intrigues,  they  succeeded 


472  HEROD.  Lbct.  L 

in  inducing  Herod,  by  the  same  authority  that  Solo- 
mon and  the  Syrian  kings  had  exercised  before  him, 
to  supersede  Hananel,  and  appoint  Aristobulus  in  his 
place.  His  mother's  heart  misgave  her,  and  she  had 
planned,  with  her  friend,  in  some  respects  a  kindred 
spirit,  Cleopatra,  a  flight  for  herself  and  for  him  into 
Egypt.  But  the  plan  was  discovered,  and  the  fate 
which  she  had  feared  for  her  son  was  precipitated  by 
the  very  object  which  she  had  striven  to  obtain  for 
him.  It  was,  as  so  often  on  other  occasions  in  the 
Jewish  history,  amidst  the  peculiar  festivities  and  so- 
lemnities of  the  Feast1  of  Tabernacles  that  he  was 
to  assume  his  office.  He  was  but  just  seventeen  ;  his 
commanding  stature,  beyond  his  age,  his  transcendent 
beauty,  his  noble  bearing,  set  off  by  the  High  Priest's 
gorgeous  attire,  at  once  riveted  the  attention  of  the 
vast  assembly,  and  when  he  ascended  the  steps  of  the 
altar  for  the  sacrifice  it  recalled  so  vividly  the  image 
of  his  grandfather,  Aristobulus,  so  passionately  loved 
and  so  bitterly  lamented,  that,  as  in  the  well-known 
scene  in  a  great  modern  romance,  the  recognition  flew 
from  mouth  to  mouth  ;  the  old  popular  enthusiasm  was 
revived,  which,  it  became  evident,  would  be  satisfied 
with  nothing  short  of  restoring  to  him  the  lost  crown 
of  his  family. 

The  suspicions  of  Herod  were  excited.  The  joyous 
Murder  of  Feast  was  over,  and  the  youthful  High  Priest, 
buius.  fresh  from  his  brillant  display,  was  invited  to 
his  mother's  palace  amongst  the  groves  of  Jericho  — 
the  fashionable  watering-place,  as  it  had  become,  of 
Palestine.  Herod  received  the  boy  with  his  usual 
sportiveness  and  gayety.  It  was  one  of  the  warm  au- 
tumnal days  of  Syria,  and  the  heat  was  yet  more  over 

'  See  Lecture  XLIII. 


Lect  l.  king  of  the  jews.  473 

powering  in  that  tropical  valley.  In  the  sultry  noon 
the  High  Priest  and  his  young  companions  stood  cool- 
ing themselves  beside  the  large  tanks  which  surrounded 
the  open  court  of  the  Palace,  and  watching  the  gambols 
and  exercises  of  the  guests  or  slaves,  as,  one  after  an- 
other, they  plunged  into  these  crystal  swimming  baths. 
Amongst  these  was  the  band  of  Gaulish  guards,1  whom 
Augustus  had  transferred  from  Cleopatra  to  Herod, 
and  whom  Herod  employed  as  his  most  unscrupulous 
instruments.  Lured  on  by  these  perfidious  playmates, 
the  princely  boy  joined  in  the  sport,  and  then,  as  at 
sunset  the  sudden  darkness  fell  over  the  gay  scene,  the 
wild  band  dipped  and  dived  with  him  under  the  deep 
water;  and  in  that  fatal  "baptism"2  life  was  extin- 
guished. When  the  body  was  laid  out  in  the  Palace 
the  passionate  lamentations  of  the  Princesses  knew  no 
bounds.  The  news  flew  through  the  town,  and  every 
house  felt  as  if  it  had  lost  a  child.  The  mother  sus- 
pected, but  dared  not  reveal  her  suspicions,  and  in  the 
agony  of  self-imposed  restraint,  and  in  the  compression 
of  her  determined  will,  trembled  on  the  brink  of  self- 
destruction.  Even  Herod,  when  he  looked  at  the  dead 
face  and  form,  retaining  all  the  bloom  of  youthful 
beauty,  was  moved  to  tears  —  so  genuine,  that  they 
almost  served  as  a  veil  for  his  complicity  in  the  mur- 
der. And  it  was  not  more  than  was  expected  from  the 
effusion  of  his  natural  grief  that  the  funeral  was  or- 
dered on  so  costly  and  splendid  a  scale  as  to  give  con- 
solation3 even  to  the  bereaved  mother  and  sister. 
That  mother,  however,  still  plotted,  and  now  with 

1  B.  J.,  i.  22,  2.  tion  it  acquired  a  new  celebrity,  ar« 

2  Pa-rrriCovres,  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  rests  the  attention,  and,  as  used  here] 
8,  3.     The  word,  especially  in  that  shows  clearly  its  true  meaning, 
(ocality,  whence  in  the  next  genera-  8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  3,  4 

60 


474  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

increased  restlessness,  against  the  author  of  her  misery. 
That  sister  still  felt  secure  in  the  passionate  affection 
of  her  husband,  on  whose  nobler  qualities  she  relied 
when  others  doubted.  But  now  the  tragedy  spread 
and  deepened,  and  intertwined  itself  as  it  grew  with 
the  great  struggle  waging  on  the  larger  theatre  of  his- 
tory. In  the  court  of  Herod  there  were  ranged  on  one 
side  the  two  Princesses  of  the  Asnionean  family,  on  the 
other  the  mother  and  the  sister  of  Herod  himself, 
Cypros  and  Salome,  who  resented  the  contempt  with 
which  the  royal  ladies  of  the  Maccabtean  house  looked 
down  on  the  upstart  Idumsean  family.  In  Egypt  was 
Cleopatra,  ambitious  of  annexing  Palestine,  now  en- 
deavoring to  inveigle  Herod  himself  by  her  arts,  now 
poisoning  the  mind  of  Antony  against  him.  In  Rome 
were  Antony  and  Augustus  Caesar  contending  for  the 
mastery  of  the  world,  and  Herod  alternately  pleading 
his  cause  before  the  one  and  the  other  —  before  his 
ancient  friend  Antony,  and  then,  after  the 
battle  of  Actium,  before  the  new  ruler,  who 
had  the  magnanimity  to  be  touched  by  the  frankness 
with  which  Herod  urged  his  fidelity  to  Antony  as  the 
plea  for  the  confidence  of  Augustus.1  Meanwhile,  like 
a  hunted  animal  turned  to  bay,  his  own  passions  grew 
fiercer,  his  own  methods  more  desperate.  Aristobulus, 
the  young,  the  beautiful,  had  perished.  But  there 
remained  the  aged  Pontiff  Hyrcanus.  Insignificant, 
Death  of  humiliated,  mutilated  as  he  was,  there  was  still 
b.  c.  30.  the  chance  that  the  same  veneration  which  had 
°ncircled  him  in  Chaldasa  might  gather  round  him  in 
Palestine,  and  that  even  the  Roman  policy  might  con- 
vert him  into  a  rival  King.  For  a  moment,  listening 
to  the  counsels  of  his  restless  daughter,  Hyrcanus  gave 

1   See  Hausratb,  Zeit  Christi,  287. 


Lect.  l.  murder  of  mariamne.  475 

to  Herocl  the  pretext  needed  for  an  accusation,  and  (so 
carefully  were  preserved  the  forms  of  the  Jewish  State) 
a  trial  and  a  judgment ;  and  at  the  age  of  eighty  the 
long  and  troubled  life  of  the  Asmonean  Pontiff  was  cut 
off. 

The  intestine  quarrels  in  the  Heroclian  court  now 
became  so  violent  that  the  Princesses  of  the  rival  fac- 
tions could  not  be  allowed  to  meet.  The  mother  and 
sister  of  Herod  were  lodged  in  the  fastness  which  was 
more  peculiarly  his  own  —  Masada,  by  the  Dead  Sea. 
His  wife  and  her  mother  remained  in  the  castle  dear  to 
them  as  the  ancient  residence  and  burial-place *  of  their 
family  —  Alexandreum. 

There  is  something  magnificent  in  the  attitude  of 
Mariamne  at  this  crisis  of  her  history  —  never  for  one 
moment  lowering  herself  to  any  of  the  base  intrigues 
of  man  or  woman  that  surrounded  her,  but  never  dis- 
guising from  her  husband  her  sense  of  the  Murder  of 
wrongs  he  had  inflicted  on  her  house.  When  b.  c.  29. 
he  flew  back  from  his  interview  with  Augustus,  inspired 
by  the  passionate  affection  of  his  first  love,  to  announce 
to  her  his  success  in  winning  the  favor  of  the  con- 
queror of  Actium,  she  turned  away  and  reproached  him 
with  the  murders  of  her  brother  and  her  grandfather. 

Now  was  the  moment  when  Salome  saw  her  oppor- 
tunity. She  played  on  every  chord  of  the  King's  sus- 
picious temper,  till  it  was  irritated  past  endurance. 
Mariamne  was  arrested,  tried,  and  condemned.  Even 
in  these  last  moments,  she  rose  superior  to  all  around 
her.  Unlike  her  mother,  she  had  never  shared  in 
mean  plots  and  counterplots  to  advance  the  interests 
or  secure  the  safety  of  the  Asmonean  house.  If  she 
spoke   in   behalf  of  her   kindred,    it  was    bollly   and 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xvii.  8,  C. 


476  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

frankly  to  a  husband,  on  whose  affections  and  generos- 
ity, if  he  was  left  to  himself,  she  knew  that  she  could 
rely.  Unlike  that  ambitious  princess,  now  in  her  ex- 
treme adversity  she  maintained  a  serenity  in  which  her 
mother  failed.  It  is  the  characteristic  difference  of  the 
two  natures  that  the  restless  woman  who  had  employed 
every  miserable  art  in  order  to  protect  her  family,  now 
that  the  noblest  of  her  race,  for  whom  she  had  hazarded 
all,  was  on  the  point  of  destruction,  lost  all  courage  and 
endeavored  to  clear  herself  by  cowardly  reproaches  of 
her  daughter  in  justification  of  the  King.  Mariamne, 
however,  answered  not  a  word.  "  She  smiled  a  dutiful 
"  though  scornful  smile." 1  Her  look  for  a  moment 
showed  how  deeply  she  felt  for  the  shame  of  a  mother ; 
but  she  went  on  to  her  execution  with  unmoved  coun- 
tenance, with  unchanged  color,  and  died,  as  she  had 
lived,  a  true  Maccabee.  Perhaps  the  most  affecting 
and  convincing  testimony  to  her  great  character  was 
Herod's  passionate  remorse.  In  a  frenzy  of  grief  he 
invoked  her  name,  he  burst  into  wild  lamentations, 
and  then,  as  if  to  distract  himself  from  his  own 
thoughts,  he  plunged  into  society ;  he  had  recourse  to 
all  his  favorite  pursuits;  he  gathered  intellectual  so- 
ciety round  him ;  he  drank  freely  with  his  friends ;  he 
went  to  the  chase.  And  then,  again,  he  gave  orders 
that  his  servants  should  keep  up  the  illusion  of  address- 
ing her  as  though  she  could  still  hear  them ;  he  shut 
himself  up  in  Samaria,  the  scene  of  their  first  wedded 
life,  and  there,  for  a  long  time,  attacked  by  a  devour- 
ing fever,  hovered  on  the  verge  of  life  and  death.  Of 
the  three  stately  towers  which  he  afterwards  added  to 
the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  one  was  named  after  his  friend 
Hippias,  the  second  after  his  favorite  brother  Phasael, 

1  Mariamne,   the    Fair    Queen   of  Jewry,  act  v.  scene  1. 


Lect.  L.  CLOSE   OF  HIS   REIGN.  477 

but  the  third,  most  costly  and  most  richly  worked  of 
all,  was  the  monument  of  his  beloved  Mariamne.1 

It  is2  not  necessary  to  pursue  in  detail  the  entangle- 
ments by  which  the  successive  members  of  the  Death  of 

xt  s,  ■,  .  Alexandra. 

Herodian  family  fell  victims  to  the  sanguinary  b.  c.  28. 
passion  which  now  took  possession  of  the  soul  of  Herod. 
Alexandra  was  the  first  to  fall.  There  remained  the 
two  sons  of  Mariamne,  Alexander  and  Aristobulus,  in 
whom  their  father  delighted  to  see  an  image  of  their 
lost  and  lamented  mother.  He  sent  them  to  be  edu- 
cated at  Rome  in  the  household  of  Pollio,  the  friend  of 
Virgil ;  and  when  they  returned  to  Palestine,  End  of  the 
with  all  the  graces  of  a  Roman  education  and  Mariamne. 
with  the  royal  bearing,  apparently  inextin-  B" c* 16_6- 
guishable  in  the  Asmonean  house,  it  seemed,  from  the 
popular  enthusiasm  which  they  excited,  that  they 
might  yet  carry  on  that  great  name ;  and  their  father, 
by  the  high  marriages  which  he  prepared  for  them  — 
for  Alexander  with  the  daughter  of  the  King  of  Cap- 
pad  ocia,  for  Aristobulus  with  his  cousin  the  daughter 
of  Salome  —  hoped  to  have  consolidated  their  fortunes 
and  reconciled  the  feuds  of  the  two  rival  families.  But 
all  was  in  vain.  They  inherited,  with  their  mother's 
beauty,  her  haughty  and  disdainful  spirit.  They  cher- 
ished her  in  an  undying  memory.  Her  name 3  was  al- 
ways on  their  lips,  and  in  their  lamentations  for  her 
were  mingled  curses  on  her  destroyer ;  when  they  saw 
her  royal  dresses  bestowed  on   the  ignoble  wives   of 

i  B.  J.,  v.  4,  3.  marry.     She,  to  escape,  sprang  from 

2  According  to  the  Rabbinical  tra-  the  house-top,  and  destroyed  herself. 

aitions,  compressing  into  one  scene  He  kept  her  body  for  seven  yeara 

this    series   of   crimes   and    sorrows,  embalmed    in    honey    (Derenbourg, 

"the  slave  of  the  Asmoneans  "  de-  115). 

Stroyed   all   the   family   except    one         3  B.  /.,  i.  24,  3;  Ant.,  xvi.  8,  4. 

young  maiden,  whom  he  proposed  to 


478  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

their  father's  second  marriage  they  threatened  him  to 
his  face  that  they  would  soon  make  those  fine  ladies 
wear  haircloth  instead ;  and  to  their  companions  they 
ridiculed  the  vanity  with  which  in  his  declining  years 
he  insisted  on  the  recognition  of  his  youthful  splendor, 
his  skill  as  a  sportsman,  and  even  his  superior  stature. 
And  now  there  was  a  new  element  of  mischief —  his 
eldest  son  Antipater,  who  watched  every  opportunity 
of  destroying  his  father's  interest  in  these  aspiring 
youths  —  the  very  demon  of  the  Herodian  house.  He 
and  the  she-wolf  Salome  at  last  accomplished 
their  object,  and  the  two  young  Princes  were 
tortured,  tried,  and  at  last  executed  at  Sebaste,  the 
scene  of  their  mother's  marriage,  and  interred  in  the 
ancestral  burial-place  of  the  Alexandreum.1  They  were, 
if  not  in  lineage  yet  in  character,  the  last  of  their  race. 
Their  children,  in  whose  behalf  the  better  feelings  of 
Herod  broke  out  when,  with  tears  and  passionate  kisses 
of  affection  which  no  one  doubted  to  be  sincere,  he 2 
endeavored  to  make  plans  for  their  prosperous  settle- 
ment, were  gradually  absorbed  into  the  Herodian  fam- 
ily ;  and  although  two  of  them,  Herod  Agrippa  and 
Herodias,  played  a  conspicuous  part  even  in  the  sacred 
history  which  follows,  they  lost  the  associations  of  the 
Maccabsean  name,  and  never  kindled  the  popular  en- 
thusiasm in  their  behalf.  The  death  of  Mariamne  and 
her  sons  represents  in  the  fall  of  the  Asmonean  dynasty 
the  close  of  the  last  brilliant  page  of  Jewish  history. 
So  long  as  there  was  a  chance  of  a  Prince  from  that 
august  and  beautiful  race,  the  visions  of  a  Son  of  David 
retired  into  the  background.  It  was  only  when  the 
last  descendant  of  those  royal  Pontiffs  passed  away  that 
wider  visions  again  filled  the  public  mind,  and  prepared 

i  B.  ./.,  i.  28,  6;   Ant.,  xvi.  4,  7.  2  D.  J.,  i.  28,  2. 


T.ECT.  L.  HIS  DEATH.  479 

the  way  for  One  who,  whatever  might  be  His  outward 
descent,  in  His  spiritual  character  represented  the  best 
aspect  of  the  Son  of  Jesse.  And  even  then  the  famous 
apostolic  names  of  the  coming  history  were  inherited 
from  the  enduring  interest  in  the  Maccabsean  family  — 
John,  and  Judas,  and  Simon,  and  Matthias  or  Matta- 
fchias.  Above  all,  the  name  so  sweet  to  Christian  and 
to  European  ears,  "Mary"  owes,  no  doubt,  its  con- 
stant repetition  in  the  narratives  alike  of  the  Evan- 
gelists and  of  Josephus,  not  to  Miriam  the  sister  of 
Moses,  but  to  the  high-souled  and  lamented  princess 
Mariamne. 

And  now  came  the  end  of  Herod  himself.  The  pal- 
ace was  haunted  by  the  memories  of  the  As-  Death  of 
inonean  Queen.  "  The  ghosts  of  two  murdered  B.e™4. 
"  Princes," a  writes  the  Jewish  historian,  rising  from 
his  prosaic  style  almost  to  the  tone  of  the  iEschylean 
Trilogy,  "  wandered  through  every  chamber  of  the  pal- 
"  ace,  and  became  the  inquisitors  and  informers  to  drag 
"  out  the  hidden  horrors  of  the  Court."  The  villain  of 
the  family,  Antipater,  had  paid  at  last  the  forfeit  of  his 
tissue  of  crimes.  But  his  father  was  already  in  his  last 
agonies  in  the  Palace  of  Jericho  —  the  scene  of  such 
splendid  luxury,  and  such  fearful  crime.  As  a  remedy 
for  the  loathsome  disorder  of  which  he  was  the  prey, 
he  was  carried  across  the  Jordan  to  one  of  the  loveliest 
spots  in  Palestine  —  the  hot 2  sulphur  springs  which 
burst  from  the  base  of  the  basaltic  columns  in  the  deep 
ravine  on  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Dead  Sea :  issuing", 
according  to  popular   belief,  from  the   bottomless   pit. 

1  Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  30,  7.  from  whose  pit  those  boiling  foun- 

2  The  legend  is  that  they  were  tains  gushed  forth  (Canon  Tristram's 
discovered  by  a  servant  of  Solomon,  Land  of  Moab,  237-250,  —  the  first 
who  was  by  his  deafness  proof  against  full  description  of  this  interesting 
the   incantations   of   the    Evil   One,  spot). 


480  HEROD.  Lect    L 

There,  in  "the  Beautiful  Stream/'1  as  the  Greeks 
called  it,  the  unhappy  King  tried  to  burn  and  wash 
away  his  foul  distempers.  It  was  all  in  vain.  Full 2  in 
his  face,  as  he  lay  tossing  in  those  sulphurous  baths, 
rose  above  the  western  hills  the  fortress  which  he  had 
called  by  his  name  and  fixed  for  his  burial.  And  now 
thitherward  he  must  go.  Back  to  Jericho  the  dying 
King  was  borne.  The  hideous  command  which  in  his 
last  ravings  he  gave  to  cause  a  universal  mourning 
through  the  country  by  the  slaughter  of  the  chief  men 
of  the  State,  whom  he  had  imprisoned  for  that  purpose 
in  the  hippodrome  of  Jericho,  was  happily  disobeyed. 
His  sister  Salome,  who  had  already  so  much  on  her  con- 
science, spared  herself  this  latest  guilt ;  and  when  the 
body  of  Herod  was  carried  to  its  last  resting-place,  it 
was  attended  with  unusual  pomp,  but  not  with  unusual 
crime.  For  seven  long  days  the  procession  ascended 
the  precipitous  passes  from  Jericho  to  the  mountains 
of  Judaea.  With  crown  and  sceptre  and  under  a  purple 
pall  the  corpse  of  the  dead  King  lay.  Round  it  were 
the  numerous  sons  of  that  divided  household.  Then 
followed  his  guards,  and  the  three  trusty  bands  of 
Thracian,  German,  and  Celtic  soldiers,  who  had  so  long 
been,  as  it  were,  the  Janissaries  of  his  court.3  Then 
through  those  arid  hills  defiled  the  army,  and  then  five 
hundred  slaves  with  spices  for  the  burial.  According 
to  the  fashion  of  those  days,  when  each  dynasty  or 
branch  of  a  dynasty  had  its  sepulchral  vault  in  its  own 
special  fortress,  the  remains  of  the  dead  king  were 
carried  up  to  that  huge4  square-shaped  hill  which  com- 

1  Callirrhoe,  Joscphus,  Ant.,  xvii.     or  Jcbel  Fureidis,  was  first  identl- 
6;  Plin.,  v.  7.  ficd   with  the   Herodium  by  Robin- 

2  Tristram,  240.  son,  D.  R.,  iv.  173.  It  is  described 
8  Joscphus,  Ant.,  xvii.  8,  4.  at  length  by  Josephus,  Ant.,  xvii. 
*  The  conspicuous  hill  near  Beth-     8,  3;  B.  J.,  i.  21,  10;  33,  9. 

lehem  called  the  "  Frank  Mountain," 


Lect.  l.  his  character.  481 

mands  the  pass  to  Hebron,  on  the  summit  of  which 
Herod,  in  memory  of  his  escape  on  that  spot  thirty-six 
years  before,  had  built  a  vast  palace  and  called  it  by 
his  name,  Herodium. 

Such,  disengaged  from  its  labyrinthine  intricacy,  is 
the  story  of  the  last  potentate  of  commanding  char- 
acter and  world-wide  renown  that  reigned  over  Judeea. 
It  is  a  character  which,  had  it  been  in  the  Biblical  rec- 
ords, would  have  ranked  in  thrilling  and  instructive 
interest  beside  that  of  the  ancient  Kings  of  Israel  or 
Judah.  The  momentary  glimpses  which  we  gain  of 
him  in  the  New  Testament,  through  the  story  of  his 
conversation  with  the  Magi  and  his  slaughter  of  the 
children  of  Bethlehem,  are  quite  in  keeping  with  the 
jealous,  irritable,  unscrupulous  temper  of  the  last  "  days 
u  of  Herod  x  the  King,"  as  we  read  them  in  the  pages 
of  Josephus. 

But  this  is  but  a  small  portion  of  his  complex  career. 
The  plots  bred  in  the  atmosphere  of  polyg-  His  charac. 
amy,  the  "  foul  and  midnight  murders,"  the ter- 
thirst  for  cruelty  growing  with  its  gratification,  are 
features  of  Oriental  and  of  despotic  life  only  too  familiar 
to  us  in  the  history  even  of  David.  The  penitence  of 
Herod  reminds  us  of  that  of  the  murderer  of  Uriah,  but 
he  has  left  no  Psalms  in  which  it  has  been  enshrined 
for  the  admiration  of  posterity.  And  besides  its  own 
intrinsic  lessons  is  the  interest  which  it  possesses  as 
the  central  element  in  the  drama  which  closed  the 
Asmonean  history.  He  is  the  Jewish  Othello,  but 
with  more  than  a  Desdemona  for  his  victim.  When 
the  Moor  of  Venice,  in  his  closing  speech,  casts  about 
for  some  one  to  whom  he  may  compare  himself,  it  was 
long  thought  by  the  commentators  that  there  was  none 

1  Matt.  ii.  1.     See  Hausrath,  Zeit  Christi,  281. 
61 


482  HEROD  Lect.  L. 

so  suitable  as  Herod,  "  the  base x  Judsean,  who  threw  a 
"  pearl  away  richer  than  all  his  tribe."  Whether  this 
were  so  or  not,  a  dramatic  piece  on  the  subject  had 
already  been  constructed  by  a  gifted  English  lady, 
with  a  knowledge  of  the  Herodian  age  surprising  for 
the  seventeenth  century.2  When  Voltaire  apologized 
to  the  French  public  for  having  chosen  Mariamne  for 
the  subject  of  one  of  his  poetical  plays,  he  rose  to  its 
grandeur  with  an  enthusiasm  unlike  himself.  "  A  king 
"  to  whom  has  been  given  the  name  of  Great,  en- 
"  amored  of  the  loveliest  woman  in  the  world ;  the 
"  fierce  passion  of  this  King  so  famous  for  his  virtues 
"  and  for  his  crimes  —  his  ever-recurring  and  rapid 
"  transition  from  love  to  hatred,  and  from  hatred  to 
"  love  —  the  ambition  of  his  sister  —  the  intrigues  of 
"  his  concubines  —  the  cruel  situation  of  a  princess 
"  whose  virtue  and  beauty  are  still  world-renowned, 
"  who  had  seen  her  kinsmen  slain  by  her  husband,  and 
"  who,  as  the  climax  of  grief,  found  herself  loved  by 
"  their  murderer  —  what  a  field  for  imagination  is  this  ! 
"  What  a  career  for  some  other3  genius  than  mine !  " 
And  when  at  last  another  genius4  arose,  who  had,  as 
Groethe  observed,  a  special  aptitude  for  apprehending 
the  ancient  Biblical  characters,  there  are  few  of  his 
poems  at  once  more  pathetic  in  themselves  and  more 
true  to  history  than  that  which  represents  the  unhappy 
King  wandering  through  the  galleries  of  his  palace  and 
still  invoking  his  murdered  wife  — 

1  Othello,  act  v.  scene  2.     So  the  *'  that  learned,  virtuous,   and  truly 

older    commentators    and    the    first  "noble  ladie,  E.  C."  (Lady  Elizabeth 

folio  edition.     The  second  folio  and  Carew)  1613.     One  spirited  chorus, 

Ihe   later   commentators   read    "In-  on   the   forgiveness   of   injuries,  de- 

'  dian."  serves  to  rescue  it  from  oblivion. 

a  "  The  Tragedie  of  Mariam,  the         3  Quoted  by  Salvador,  i.  304. 
'  Faire  Queen  of  Jewry,  written  by         4  Byron's  Hebrew  Melodies. 


Lect.  l  his  PUBLIC  WORKS.  483 

Oh,  Mariamne  !  now  for  thee 

The  heart  for  which  thou  bled'st  is  bleeding; 
Revenge  is  lost  in  agony, 

And  wild  remorse  to  rage  succeeding. 
Oh,  Mariamne  !  where  art  thou  ? 

Thou  canst  not  hear  my  bitter  pleading: 
Ah  !  couldst  thou  —  thou  wouldst  pardon  now, 

Though  Heaven  were  to  my  prayer  unheeding. 

She  's  gone,  who  shared  my  diadem; 

She  sank,  with  her  my  joys  entombing  ; 
I  swept  that  flower  from  Judah's  stem, 

Whose  leaves  for  me  alone  were  blooming; 
And  mine  's  the  guilt,  and  mine  the  hell, 

This  bosom's  desolation  dooming; 
And  I  have  earned  those  tortures  well, 

Which  unconsumed  are  still  consuming! 

But  the  importance  of  Herod's  life  does  not  end  with 
iris  personal  history.  He  created  in  great  part  that 
Palestine  which  he  left  behind  him  as  the  platform  on 
which  the  closing  scenes  of  the  Jewish,  the  opening 
scenes  of  the  Christian,  Church  were  to  be  enacted. 

Few  men    have    ever   lived  who,  within  so  short  a 
time,  so    transformed    the    outward  face   of  a  His  public 
country.     That  Grecian,  Roman,  Western  col-  Palestine. 
oring  which  Antiochus  Epiphanes  had  vainly  tried  to 
throw  over  the   gray  hills  and  rough  towns  of  Judaea 
was  accomplished  by  Herod  the  Great.     It  would  seem 
as  if,  to  manifest  his  gratitude  for  his  gracious  recep- 
tion by  Augustus  Caesar,  and  for  the  Emperor's  visit  to 
Palestine,  he  was  determined  to   plant  monuments  of 
him  throughout  his  dominions.     At  the  extreme  north, 
on  the  craggy  hill  which  overhangs  the  rush-  c^sarea 
ing   source   of  Jordan,   rose   a   white   marble  PhlhPPK 
temple  dedicated  to  his  patron,  which  for  many  years 
superseded  alike  the  Israelite  name   of  Dan  and  the 
Grecian  name  of  Paneas  by  Ccesarea.     In  the  centre  of 
Palestine,  on  the  beautiful  hill  of  the  ancient  Samaria, 


484  HEROD. 


Lkct.  L. 


laid  waste  by  Hyrcanus  L,  the  scene  of  his  marriage 
with  Mariamne,  he  built  a  noble  city,  of  which  the  col- 
onnades still  in  part  remain,  to  which  he  gave  the  name 
sebaste.  °f  Sebaste  —  the  Greek  version  of  Augusta.1 
b.  c.  25.  Qn  tjie  coast?  beside  a  desert  spot  hitherto  only 
marked  by  the  2  Tower  of  Strato,  with  a  village  at  its 
foot,  he  constructed  a  vast  haven  which  was  to  rival 
the  Piraaus.  Around  and  within  it  were  splendid 
breakwaters  and  piers.  Abutting  on  it  a  city  was 
erected,  so  magnificent  with  an  array  of  public  and 
private  edifices,  that  it  ultimately  became  the  capital  of 
Palestine,  throwing  Jerusalem  itself  into  a  place  alto- 
gether secondary.  Houses  of  shining  marble  stood 
Csesarea       round  the  harbor :    on  a  rising;  ground  in  the 

Stratonis.  J  °    ° 

B.  c.  10.  centre,  as  in  a  modern  "  crescent,"  rose  the 
Temple  of  Augustus,  which  gave  again  the  name  of 
Ccesarea  to  the  town  —  out  of  which  looked  on  the 
Mediterranean  two  colossal  statues  ; 3  one  of  Augustus, 
equal  in  proportions  to  that  of  the  Olympian  Jupiter, 
one  of  the  city  of  Rome,  equal  to  that  of  the  Argive 
Juno.  Further  down  the  coast  he  rebuilt  the  mined 
Grecian  city  of  Anthedon,  and  gave  to  it,  in  commem- 
oration of  the  visit  of  his  friend  the  able  minister  of 
Augustus,  the  name  of  Agrippeum4  and,  as  over  the 
portico  of  the  Pantheon  at  Rome,  so  over  the  gate 
of  this  Syrian  city  was  deeply  graven  the  name  of 
Agrippa.  In  all  these  maritime  towns,  as  far  north  as 
the  Syrian  Tripolis,  and,  not  least,  in  that  Hellenized 
city  of  Ascalon,  to  which  Christian  tradition  assigned 
the  origin  of  his  ancestors,  he  established  the  luxu- 
rious  and   wholesome   institutions  of  baths,  fountains, 

Int.,  xv.  9,  6;  B.  J., 


1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  8,  1. 

8  JosepilUS, 

2  Ibid.  xv.  9,  6;  B.  J.,  i.  217. 

i.  21,  7. 

4  B.  J.,  i.  21 

Lect.  l.  the  temple.  485 

and  colonnades,  and  added  in  the  inland  cities  —  in  the 
romantic  Jericho  and  even  in  the  holy  Jerusalem,  —  the 
more  questionable  entertainments  of  Greek  theatres, 
hippodromes,  and  gymnasia,  which  in  the  time  of 
the  Maccabees  had  caused  so  much  scandal ;  and  the 
splendid,  but  to  the  humane  *  and  reverential  spirit  of 
the  Jewish  nation  still  more  distasteful,  spectacles  of 
the  Roman  amphitheatre. 

Bat  the  great  monument  of  himself  which  he  left 
was  the  restored,  or,  to  speak  more  exactly,  The  Tempie 
the  rebuilt  Temple  at  Jerusalem.  A  Jewish  ?efraJerusa~ 
tradition  connected  this  prodigious  feat  with  B'  c' 17" 
the  miserable  crimes  of  his  later  years.  It  was  said 
that  he  consulted  a  famous  Rabbi,  Babas  the  son  of 
Bouta  —  the  only  one  who,  as  it  was  believed,  had 
survived  the  massacre  of  the  Teachers  of  the  Law,  and 
who  himself  had  his  eyes2  put  out  —  how  he  should 
appease  the  remorse  which  he  now  felt,  and  that  the 
Rabbi  answered  :  "  As  thou  hast  extinguished  the  light 
"  of  the  world,  the  interpreters  of  the  law,  work  for 
"  the  light  of  the  world  by 3  restoring  the  splendor  of 
"  the  Temple."  If  this  be  so,  the  Temple  in  its  great- 
est magnificence  was,  like  many  a  modern  Cathedral  — 
Milan,  Norwich,  Gloucester  —  a  monument  of  penitence. 
It  might,  indeed,  have  been  urged  that  this  elaborate 
restoration  was  but  the  fulfilment  of  the  idea  of  an 
enlarged  Temple,  on  a  grander  scale,  which,  from  the 
visions  of  Ezekiel  clown  to  those  of  the  book  of  Enoch,4 
had  floated  before  the  mind  of  the  Jewish  seers.     But 

1  Josephus,  Ant. ,  xv.  8,  1.  victory  by  Costobarus,  the  husband 

2  Derenbourg,  152.  Comp.  Jose-  of  Salome;  and  that,  being  after- 
phus,  Ant.,  xv.  7,  10,  where  it  is  wards  betrayed  by  her,  they  were 
said  that  the  sons  of  Babas,  who  had  put  to  death. 

^een  faithful  adherents  of  Antigonus,         8  Salvador,  i.  320. 
had    been    concealed   after    Herod's         4  Enoch  xc.  29. 


486  HEROD.  Lkot.  h. 

the  sacredness  of  the  building,  and  the  mistrust  of 
Herod,  created  difficulties  which  it  required  all  Jiis 
vigor  and  all  his  craft  to  overcome.  So  serious  had 
they  seemed  that  his  prudent  patron  at  Rome  was  sup- 
posed to  have  dissuaded  the  undertaking  altogether. 
"  If  the  old  building  is  not  destroyed,"  said  Augustus, 
rhe  rebuild-  "  d°  not  destroy  it ;  if  it  is  destroyed,  do  not 
"  rebuild  it ; x  if  you  both  destroy  and  rebuild 
"  it  you  are  a  foolish  servant."  The  scruple  against  de- 
molishing even  a  synagogue  before  a  new  one  wTas  built 
was  urged  with  double  force  now  that  the  Temple 
itself  wras  menaced.  It  was  met  by  the  casuistry  of  the 
same  wise  old  counsellor  who  had  suggested  the  resto- 
ration to  Herod.  "I  see,"  said  Babas,  "a  breach  in 
"the  old  building  which  makes  its  repair2  necessary.' 
Not  for  the  last  time  in  ecclesiastical  history  has  a  small 
rift  in  an  ancient  institution  been  made  the  laudable 
pretext  for  its  entire  reparation.  Herod  himself  fully 
appreciated  the  delicacy  of  the  task.  By  a  transparent 
fiction  the  existing  Temple  was  supposed  to  be  contin- 
ued into  the  new  building.  The  worship  was  never 
interrupted ;  and,  although  actually  the  Temple  of 
Herod,  it  was  still  regarded  as  identical  with  that  of 
Zerubbabel.3  Amongst  the  thousand  wagons  la! en 
with  stones,  and  ten  thousand  skilled  artisans,  there 
were  a  thousand  priests4   trained  for  the   purpose  as 

1  Talmud,  in  Salvador,  i.  320.  there  is  some  ground  for  the  inter- 

2  Derenbourg,  153.  pretation  of  Surenhusius  (Mishna,  v. 

3  The  forty-six  years  mentioned  in  316)  —  that  the  forty-six  years  re- 
li  hn  ii.  20  may  be  reckoned  from  lates  to  the  period  of  the  building  of 
B.  c.  17,  when  the  Temple  of  Herod  Zerubbabel's  Temple,  from  B.  c.  536 
tv;is  beo-un,  till  A.  d.  28,  when  the  to  159,  with  the  intermissions  of  the 
words  in  question  were  spoken.  But  work,  on  the  theory  that  Herod's 
us  the  actual  building  of  Herod  only  Temple  was  not  to  be  recognized. 
mil.  ten  years,  and  its  completion  by  *  Josephus,  Ant.,xv.  11,  3;  Ewald, 
tferod  Agrippa  was  long  afterwards,  v.  433. 


Lect.  l.  the  temple.  487 

masons  and  carpenters,  who  carried  on  their  task, 
dressed  not  in  workmen's  clothes,  but  disguised  in  their 
sacerdotal  vestments.  And  so  completely  did  this  idea 
of  the  sanctity  of  the  undertaking  take  possession  ol 
the  national  mind,  that  it  was  supposed  to  have  been 
accompanied  by  a  preternatural  intervention  which  had 
not  been  vouchsafed  either  to  Solomon  or  Zerubbabel. 
During  the  whole  time  (so  it  was  said)  rain  fell  only  in 
the  night;  each  morning  the  wind  blew,  the  clouds 
dispersed,  the  sun1  shone,  and  the  work  proceeded. 

The  more  sacred  part  of  the  interior  sanctuary  was 
finished  in  eighteen  months.  The  vast  surroundings 
took  eight  years,  and,  though  additions  continued  to  be 
made  for  at  least  eighty  years  longer,  it  was  sufficiently 
completed  to  be  dedicated  by  Herod  with  the  ancient 
pomp.  Three  hundred  oxen  were  sacrificed  by  the 
King  himself,  and  many  more  by  others.  As  usual,  a 
day  was  chosen  which  should  blend  with  an  already 
existing  solemnity,  but  on  this  occasion  it  was  not  the 
Feast  of  Tabernacles,  but  the  anniversary  of  Herod's 
inauguration.  The  pride  felt  in  it  was  as  great  as,  if 
it  had  been  the  work,  not  of  the  hated  Idumaean,  but 
of  a  genuine  Israelite.  "  He  who  has  not  seen  the 
"building  of  Herod  has  never  seen  a  beautiful  thing."  2 

Let  us  look  at  this  edifice,  so  characteristic  of  the 
time  and  temper  of  Herod,  and  so  closely  intertwined 
with  the  fall  of  the  Old  and  the  resurrection  of  the 
New  Religion. 

The  great  area  was  now,  if  not  for  the  first  time, 
yet  more  distinctly  than  before,  divided  into  three 
courts. 

The  first  or  outer  court,  which  inclosed  all  the  rest, 

1  Talmud,  in  Derenbourg,  p.  153.  2  Derenbourg,  154.  Comp.  John 
Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  11,  7.  ii.  20;  Mark  xiii.  3. 


488  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

was  divided  by  balustrades,  on  which  was  the  double 1 
The  outer  inscription  in  the  two  great  Western  languages 
sourt.  forbidding  the  near  approach  of  Gentiles.  It 
was  entered  from  the  east  through  a  cloister,  which, 
from  containing  fragments  of  the  first  Temple,  cher- 
ished like  the  shafts  of  the  old  Temple  of  Minerva  in 
the  walls  of  the  Athenian  Acropolis,  was  called  the 
Cloister  of  Solomon.2  Besides  those  relics  of  the  an- 
tique past,  the  nice  of  the  surrounding  cloisters  also 
exhibited  the  more  fantastic  accumulations  of  the  suc- 
cessive wars  of  the  Jewish  Princes  —  the  shields,  and 
swords,  and  trappings  of  conquered  tribes,  down  to  the 
last  trophies  carried  off  by  Herod  from  the  Arabs  of 
Petra.3  Amongst  these  figured  conspicuously  —  as  a 
symbol,  not  of  conquest,  but  of  allegiance  —  the  golden 
eagle  of  Rome,  the  erection  of  which4  was  Herod's 
latest  public  act.  The  great  entrance  into  the  Temple 
from  the  east  was  the  gate  of  Susa  —  preserved,  prob- 
ably, in  whole  or  in  part,  from  the  time  of  the  Per- 
sian dominion. 

The  court  itself  must  have  been  completely  trans- 
formed. Its  pavement  was  variegated  as  if  with  mosa- 
ics. Its  walls  were  of  white  marble.  Along  its  northern 
and  southern5  sides  was  added  "  the    Royal    Cloister," 

1  One  of  these  inscriptions  was  porch  of  Solomon's  Temple  and  the 
discovered  lately  by  M.  Ganneau  tower  of  his  palace.  See  Lectures 
(Palestine  Exploration  Fund).  XX.,  XXVII.     Whether   1    Mace. 

2  Josephus  B.  J.,  v.  5,  1.  This,  iv.  57  refers  to  the  inner  or  outer 
apparently,  had  been  left  untouched  front  is  not  clear. 

by  Herod,  and  it  was  afterwards  pro-  4  Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  23,  2. 

posed  to  Herod  Agrippa  to  restore  it.  5  In  general  style,  though  not.  in 

But  he  also  shrank  from  so  serious  detail,  they  resembled   the  contem- 

iin  undertaking  (Josephus,  Ant.,  xx.  porary  columns  of  Baalbec  or  Pal- 

l    7).  myra,  as  may  be  seen  by  the  rera- 

'  Josephus,   Ant,  xv.   11,   3.    It  nants  still  preserved  in  the  vaults  of 

would  seem  that  these  took  the  place  the  Mosque. 
of    the    shields    which    adorned   the 


Lect.  l.  hillel.  489 

a  magnificent  colonnade  of  Corinthian  pillars,  longer 
by  one  hundred  feet  than  the  longest  English  Cathe- 
dral, and  as  broad  as  York  Minster.  At  the  north- 
west corner  was  the  old  Asmonean  fortress,  founded  by 
John  Hyrcanus,  but  strengthened  and  embellished  by 
Herod,  and,  in  his  manner,  called  Antonia,  after  his 
friend  Antony.  In  this  secure  custody  were  always 
kept  —  with  the  exception  of  a  few  years  in  the  reign 
of  the  Emperor  Tiberius  —  the  robes  and  paraphernalia 
of  the  High  Priest,  without  which  he  could  not  assume 
or  discharge  the  duties  of  his  office,  and  the  retention 
of  which  in  that  fortress  marked  in  the  most  public  and 
unmistakable  form  his  subjection  to  the  civil  governor 
—  Asmonean,  Herodian,1  or  Roman  —  who  for  the 
time  controlled  Jerusalem.  Beneath  the  shade  of  this 
fortress,  in  the  broad  area  of  the  court  corresponding 
to  the  Forum  or  the  Agora,  were  held  all  the  public 
meetings  at  which2  the  Priests  addressed  the  people. 
It  was  surrounded  by  a  low  inclosure,  over  which  the 
Priest  could  look  towards  the  Mount  of  Olives. 

Within  this  Outer  Court  rose  the  huge  castellated 
wall  which  inclosed  the  Temple.  It  had  nine  The  inner 
gateways,  with  towers  fifty  feet  high.  One  court- 
of  these,  on  the  north,  was,  like  Boabdil's  gate  at 
Granada,  called  after  Jechoniah,3  as  that  through  which 
the  last  king  of  the  house  of  David  had  passed  out  to 
the  Babylonian  exile. 

Through  this  formidable  barrier,  the  great  entrance 
was  by  the  Eastern  gate  —  sometimes  called  "  Beauti- 
"ful,"  sometimes,  from  the  Syrian  general  or  devotee  of 
the  Maccaboean  age,  Nicanor's4  gate.     The  other  gates 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  11,  4.  3  Middoth,  ii.  6. 

2  B.  J.,  ii.  17,  2;  Middoth,  i.  3;         4  Either  from   the   suspension   of 
ui.  4.  his  hand,  or  from  the  miraculous  pres- 

62 


490  HEROD.  Lect    L 

were  sheeted  with  gold  or  silver ; *  the  bronze  of  this 
one  shone  almost  with  an  equal  splendor. 

Every  evening  it  was  carefully  closed  ;  twenty  men 
were  needed  to  roll  its  heavy  doors,  and  drive  down 
into  the  rock  its  iron  bolts  and  bars.  It  was  regarded 
as  the  portcullis  of  the  Divine  Castle. 

On  penetrating  through  this  sacred  entrance,  a  plat- 
form was  entered,  called  "  of  the  Women."  At  the 
sides  of  this  were  the  Treasuries.  Thirteen  receptacles 
of  money  were  placed  there  like  inverted  trumpets. 
The  women  sat  round  in  galleries  as  still  in  Jewish 
synagogues,  and  as  of  old  in  the  Christian  Church  of 
St.  Sophia.  It  was  here  that  on  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles took  place  the  torchlight  dance,  and  the  brilliant 
illumination  of  the  night.2  It  was  a  tradition  that  in 
The  court  of tms  court  none  were  allowed  to  sit  except 
the  Priests.  priests  or  descendants  of  David. 

From  this  platform,  by  fifteen  steps,  the  worshipper 
ascended  into  the  Court  of  the  Priests.  In  the  first 
part  of  it  was  the  standing-place  for  the3  people  to 
look  at  the  sacrifices,  divided  by  a  rail  from  the  rest. 
The  chambers  round  this  court  were  occupied  by  the 
Priestly  guard,  and  contained  the  shambles  for  the 
slaughter  of  the  victims.  In  the  centre  was  the  altar, 
probably  unchanged  since  the  time  of  Judas  Macca- 
basus.  In  the  southwest  corner  was  the  Gazith  or 
'  Chamber  of  the  Squares,"  where  sat  the  Great  Coun- 
cil, with  a  door  opening  on  the  one  side  into  the  outer 
court,  on  the  other  into  this  inner  precinct. 

Immediately  beyond  the  altar  was  the  Temple  itself. 

ervation  of  the  gate  at  sea  (see  Lee-     gates  appears  from  the  Mishna  (Taa 
ture    XLVIIL;    Middoth,    ii.    3,    6;     nith,  ii.  G). 
Lightfoot's  Works,  ii.  1099).     That         '  B.  /.,  v.  5,  3. 
there   were  only  two   great  Eastern         2  Mishna,  Suca,  v.  2,  4. 

3  Salvador,  iii.  130. 


Lect.  l.  the  temple.  491 

This,  sacred  as  it  was,  received  various  additions,  either 
from  the  mighty  Restorer  or  his  immediate  Asmonean 
predecessors.  On  the  building  itself  a  higher  The  Porch 
story  was  erected.  It  was  encased  with  white 
marble  studded  with  golden  spikes.1  The  Porch  had 
now  two  vast  wings.  It  was,  in  dimensions  and  pro- 
portions, about  the  same  size  as  the  facade  of  Lincoln 
Cathedral.2 

In  the  Porch  hung  the  colossal  golden  vine,  the  em- 
blem of  the  Maccaboean  period,  resting  on  cedar  beams, 
and  spreading  its  branches  under  the  cornices  of  the 
porch,  to  which  every  pilgrim  added  a  grape  or  a  clus- 
ter in  gold,3  till  it  almost  broke  down  under  its  own 
weight.  Later  was  added  here  the  golden  lamp  pre- 
sented by  Helena,  Queen  of  Adiabene. 

Across  the  Porch,  as  also  across  the  innermost  sanct- 
uary, hung  a  curtain4  of  Babylonian  texture,  The 
blue,  scarlet,  white,  and  purple,  embroidered  Sanctuar-V- 
with  the  constellations  of  the  heavens  (always  except- 
ing5 the  forbidden  representations  of  the  animals  of  the 
Zodiac).  Within  the  Temple  were  the  table  and  the 
candlestick  of  Judas  Maccabseus.  Within  the  dark  re- 
cess of  the  Holy  of  Holies,  as  disclosed  by  Pompey's 
visit,6  there  was  nothing  but  the  stone  on  which  the 
High  Priest  laid  his  censer. 

Striking  indeed  must  have  been  the  appearance  of 
this  triple  precinct;  the  lower  court  standing  on  its 
magnificent  terraces,  the  inner  court,  surrounded  by  its 
embattled  towers  and  gateways ;  within  this,  again,  the 

1  Josephus,  B.J.,  v.  5.  4  There    was   a   whole    stock    of 

2  See  Fergusson  on  the  Temple  in  curtains  laid  up  in  the  Temple  which 
\he  Dictionary  of  the  Bible.  were  regarded  as  one  of  its  especial 

8  Mishna,    Middoth,    iii.  8;   Jose-     treasures  (Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv   7,  1). 
plms,  B.  J.,  v.  5,  4;  Ant.,  xv.  11,  3;         «  B.  J.,  v.  5,  4,  5. 
Tac,  Hist.,  v.  4.  6  Mishna,  Yoma,  v.  2. 


492  THE   TEMPLE.  Lect.  L. 

Temple  itself  with  its  snow-white  walls  and  glittering 
pinnacles  of  gold  rising  out  of  this  singular  group  and 
crowning  the  view  —  and  the  whole  scene  soaring  out 
of  the  deep  and  dark  abyss  of  the  precipitous  glen 
which  lay  beneath  it.  It  must,  as  the  most  competent 
authority  of  our  time  has  said,  have  formed  one  of  the 
most  splendid  architectural  combinations  to  be  found  in 
the  ancient  world.1 

This  was  the  new  sanctuary  of  the  Jewish  religion 
at  the  time  of  the  greatest  events  that  were  ever  to  be 
transacted  within  its  pale.  By  the  side  of  Nicanor's 
gate  sat  the  divers  butchers,  poulterers,  and  money- 
changers, who  sold  their  cattle  and  sheep  to  the  wealth- 
ier, their  doves  and  pigeons  to  the  poorer  worshippers, 
and  exchanged  Gentile  for2  Jewish  coinage,  in  order  to 
preserve  the  treasury  from  the  pollution  of  Greek  em- 
blems, until  the  day  came  when  One,  who  cared  more 
for  inward  reverence  than  for  outward  ritual,  dashed 
the  tables  to  the  floor,  and  drove  out  the  traffickers. 
In  that  antique  cloister  of  Solomon,  on  the  anniversary 
of  the  festival  of  the  Maccabsean  deliverance,  walked  to 
and  fro  the  Master  and  his  disciples,  for  shelter  from 
the  winter  cold.3  Into  those  inverted  trumpets  in  the 
inner  court  the  rich  were  casting 4  their  superfluities, 
and  the  widow  was  casting  in  the  small  coin  which  was 
her  all,  when  that  Countenance,  so  stern  in  its  frown 
against  the  mere  mechanism  of  public  worship,  smiled 
so  graciously  on  genuine  self-denial.  The  embroidered 
curtain  was  that  which  was  believed 6  to  have  been  rent 
asunder  from  top  to  bottom,  as  a  sign  that  the  time  for 
needless   partitions   between   man   and   man,  between 

1  Fcrgusson,    Dictionary     of    the         3  John  x.  23;  Acts  v.  12. 
Bible,  iii.  14G4.  4  Matt,  xii.  41. 

3  John  ii.  14.  5  Matt.  xxvi.  51. 


Lect.  l.  the  temple.  493 

Church  and  Church,  between  God  and  man,  had  ceased. 
Those  prodigious  towers,  those  piles  of  marble,  were 
the  "buildings"  and  "  stones"  to1  which  a  little  group 
of  fishermen  called  the  attention  of  Him  who  foretold 
their  total  overthrow  —  an  overthrow  which  was  the 
doom  of  all  exclusively  local  sanctity  all  over  the  world 
forever. 

From  the  tragic  story  of  the  Herodian  court,  from 
the  outward  memorials  of  his  energy  in  country  and 
city,  it  is  a  strange  transition  to  the  inner  life  both  of 
Jerusalem  and  Palestine,  so  far  as  we  can  discover  it 
through  the  slight  glimpses  afforded. 

Of  all  the  exciting  and  brilliant  scenes  which  we 
have  hitherto  recorded,  the  native  traditions  as  pre- 
served in  the  Talmud  tell  us,  with  the  exception  of 
three  incidents  in  strangely-distorted  forms,  absolutely 
nothing.  Of  the  factions  of  the  rival  priests  and 
princes,  of  the  invasion  of  Pompey,  of  the  sacrilege  of 
Crassus,  of  the  triumphs  of  Herod,  of  Actium  and 
Pharsalia,  the  Rabbinical  tradition  is  entirely  silent.2 
It  is  a  silence  which  corresponds  to  the  brief,  but  preg- 
nant statement  of  the  historian,3  that  the  large  mass  of 
the  nation,  at  the  time  of  the  first  appearance  of  Hyr- 
canus  and  Aristobulus  before  Pompey,  were  neutral  in 
the  strife  of  both  contending  parties.  But  hardly  less 
remarkable  than  this  general  indifference  of  Jewish 
tradition  to  the  events  which  fill  the  pages  of  Josephus 
is  the  silence  with  which  Josephus  himself  passes  over 
the  condition  of  the  interior  thought  and  sentiment  of 
his  countrymen ;  big  as  it  was  with  events  and  char- 
acters which  he  will  also  pass  over  in  like  manner,  but 
which  are  now  the  chief  motives  for  the  interest  of  the 

1  Mark  xui.  1,  2.  3  Josephus,  Ant.,  xiv.  3,  2. 

2  Derenbourg,  116. 


494  HEROD.  Leot.  L 

civilized   world   in   those    external    movements   which 
alone  he  has  thought  fit  to  describe. 

We  turn  first  to  the  capital  and  to  the  Temple.  On 
The  Priest-  that  splendid  theatre  it  was  still  the  ancient 
actors  that  seemed  to  walk.  It  is  true  that 
the  succession  of  the  High  Priesthood,  which  the  As- 
monean  family  had  broken,  was  never  repaired.  The 
obscure  Hananel  from  Babylon,  the  still  obscurer  Jesus 
or  Joshua  the  son  of  Phabi,  and  finally  the  two  sons  of 
Boethus 1  from  Alexandria,  were  the  nominees  of 
Herod  for  the  vacant  office.  But  the  sacred  functions 
went  on  undisturbed  through  the  revolutions  which 
had  overturned  the  order  of  those  who  performed 
them.  Every  morning  before  the  break  of  day  the 
captain  or  chief  officer 2  of  the  Temple  guard  opened 
the  door  of  the  court,  where  the  priests  "  in  residence  " 
for  the  week  had  slept  for  the  night,  and  the  proces- 
sion of  ten  passed  round  the  court  in  white  robes  and 
bare  feet  to  kill  the  morning  sacrifice.  As  the  first 
rays  of  the  rising  sun  struck  upon  the  golden  lamp 
above  the  porch,  the  trumpets  sounded  ;  and  those  of 
the  priests  who  had  drawn  the  lot  entered  the  Temple 
for  the  offering  of  incense.  That  was  the  moment,  if 
any,  for  any  preternatural  visitation  to  the  priests. 
Then  they  came  out,  and,  having  slain  the  lamb  on  the 
altar,  they  pronounced  the  benediction,  the  only  relic 
of  the  sacerdotal  office  which  has  continued  in  the 
Jewish  Church  to  our  own  time.  On  greater  days  the 
solemnities  were  increased,  but  the  general  plan  was 
the  same;  and  it  was  this  worship,  with  its  sacrificial 
shambles  and  its  minute  mechanism,  that  furnished  the 
chief  material  for  the  theological  discussions  and  eccle- 

1  Dci«nbvjrg,  154,  155.  2  Mi.ldoth,  i.  2;   John  xviii.   12, 

Ants  iv.  1 :  v.  24. 


Lect.  l.  the  priesthood.  495 

siastical  regulations  of  the  Jewish  Church  of  that 
period.  The  High  Priest  was  still  to  be  kept  from  fall- 
ing asleep  l  on  the  eve  of  the  great  fast,  by  pinching 
him  and  by  reading  to  him  what  were  thought  the 
most  exciting  parts  of  the  Bible  —  Job,  Ezra,  the 
Chronicles,  and  Daniel.2  Five  times  over  in  the  course 
of  that  day  had  he  to  take  off  and  put  on 8  his  eight 
articles  of  pontifical  dress,  and  on  each  occasion,  behind 
a  curtain»put  up  for  the  purpose  between  him  and  the 
people,  he  plunged  into  the  great  swimming-bath  or 
pool,  which,  if  he  was  old  or  infirm,  was  heated  for 
him.  He  then  put  on  all  his  gilded  garments  The  Day  of 
—  goat's-hair  gilt  —  to  penetrate  into  the  in-  ment. 
nermost  sanctuary  and  sprinkle  the  blood,  like  holy 
water,  round  the  pavement,  eight  times  checking  his 
movement,  like  the  officer  who  laid  on  stripes  on  an 
offender,  by  numbering  them.4  When  he  came  out  he 
was  thrice  to  utter  the  benediction,  when  all  were 
hushed  in  deep  stillness  to  catch  the  awful  Name  — 
which  then  only  in  each  year  of  an  Israelite's  life  could 
be  heard  —  pronounced  in  that  silence  so  distinctly 
that,  in  the  exaggerated  Rabbinical  traditions,  its  sound 
was  believed  to  reach  as  far  as  Jericho.  On  the  night 
of  that  same  clay  the  young  maidens,  dressed  in  white, 
went  out  and  danced  in  the  vineyards  near  the  city, 
and  the  young  men  came  and  chose  their  brides.  On 
all  the  ensuing  nights  of  the  festival  the  trained  devo- 
tees, like  the  dervishes  of  Constantinople,  whirled 
round  the  Temple  court  in  their  mystic  dance,  bran- 
dishing their  torches,  whilst  the  Levites  and  priests 
Btood  on  the  fifteen  steps  singing  the  Psalms  of  De- 
grees,   and  blowing  with   all   their  might   the   sacred 

1  Mishna,  Yoma,  6,  7.  3  Mishna,  Yoma,  viii.  5,  vi.  7    ' 

2  Ibid.  Yoma,  1,6.  *  Ibid.  Taanith,  iv.  8. 


496  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

horns.1  It  was  this,  combined  with  the  festoons  and 
bowers  erected  throughout  the  courts,  which  gave  to 
the  Greeks  the  impression  that  the  Jews,2  like  them- 
selves, had  a  Dionysiac  festival. 

The  ceremony  of  the  scapegoat3  still  continued, 
though  it  had  all  the  appearance  of  a  ritual  in  its  last 
stage  of  decadence.  The  terrified  creature  was  con- 
veyed from  the  Temple  to  Olivet  on  a  raised  bridge,  to 
avoid  the  jeers  of  the  irreverent  pilgrims  of  Alex- 
andria—  who  used  to  pluck  the  poor  animal's  long 
flakes  of  hair  with  the  rude  cries  of  "  Get  along  and 
"  away  with  you  !  "  Then  he  was  handed  on  from 
keeper  to  keeper  by  short  stages  over  hill  and  valley. 
At  each  hut  where  he  rested,  an  obsequious  guide 
said  to  him,  "  Here  is  your  food,  here  is  your  drink." 
The  last  in  this  strange  succession  led  him  to  a  prec- 
ipice above  the  fortress  of  Dok,4  and  hurled  him 
down,5  and  the  signal  was,  sent  back 6  to  Jerusalem 
that  the  deed  was  accomplished,  by  the  waving  of 
handkerchiefs  all  along  the  rocky  road. 

Beside  the  priesthood,  ever  since  the  time  of  Ezra, 
there  had  been  insensibly  growing  a  body  of  scholars, 
who  by  the  time  of  Herod  had  risen  to  a  distinct  func- 
tion of  the  State.  Already  under  John  Hyrcanus  there 
was  a  judicial  body  known  as  the  House  7  of  Judgment 
(Beth-Din).  To  this  was  given  the  Macedonian  title 
of  Synedrion,  transformed  into  the  barbarous  Hebrew 
The  word  Sanhedrim   or  Sanhedrin.      But   it  was 

Sanhedrin.  n0^  as  members  of  a  legislative  or  judicial  as- 

1  Mishna,  Suca,  v.  4.  surely  be  the  same  as  "  Dole  "  in  1 

2  Plut.,  Quccst.  Conviv.,  iv.  6.  Mace.  xvi.  15? 

3  It  is  used  as  an   illustration   in         5  Mishna,  Yoma,  vi.  4,  5,  7. 
the  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  but  never  in         6  Ibid.  Tamid,  8. 

the  New  Testament.  7  Derenbourg,  86. 

4  "  Zok "    in    the    Mishna    must 


lect.l.  the  eabbis.  497 

sembly  that  the  Scribes  exercised  their  main  influence. 
It  was  by  that  intrinsic,  individual  eminence  which 
gave  to  each  of  them  the  Chaldsean  name,  now  first 
appearing,  of  Rab,  "  the  Great  "  —  Rabbi,  Rabboni, 
"my  great  one,"  "Master,"  "my  master." 1  T 
By  a  succession  increasing  in  importance  we  Rabbis- 
trace  the  "pairs"  or  "couples"  of  the  distinguished 
teachers  round  whom  the  dividing  tendencies  of  the 
schools  grouped  themselves.  In  the  time  of  the  first 
Maccabees  were  Jose  the  son  of  Joazar,  and  Jose;  the 
son  of  John ;  in  the  time  of  Hyrcanus,  Joshua  the  son 
of  Perachiah,  and  Nittai  of  Arbela.  In  the  time  of 
Alexander  Jannaeus  there  were  Simeon  the  son  of 
Shetach  and  Judah  the  son  of  Tobai.  But  it  is  in  the 
trial  of  Herod,  when  the  Sanhedrin  is  first  distinctly 
mentioned,  that  the  two  chiefs  of  the  order  came  into 
full  prominence.  Their  names  in  a  corrupted  form,  as 
Sameas  and  Pollio,  appear  even  in  the  reticent  rec- 
ord of  Josephus.  Shemaiah  and  Abtalion  2  shema- 
were  proselytes,  and  supposed  to  be  descended  Abtalion. 
from  the  Assyrian  Sennacherib  by  an  Israelite  B'  Cm 50* 
mother.  "  The  High  Priest "  (say  the  Talmudic  tra- 
ditions —  we  know  not  whether  they  speak  of  Hyr- 
canus, Aristobulus,  or  Antigonus)  "  passed  out  of  the 
"  Temple  on  the  Day  of  Atonement,  followed  by  the 
"  multitude.  But  the  moment  they  saw  Shemaiah  and 
"  Abtalion  they  deserted  the  High  Priest  to  follow  the 
"  chiefs  of  the  Sanhedrin.  The  two  doctors  made 
"  their  salutations  to  the  High  Priest.  '  Peace,' 3  said 
"  the  Pontiff  in  parting  from  them,  '  to  the  men  of 

1  The  first  unquestioned   appear-  Hillel.     Lightfoot  on    Matt,    xxiii., 

ance  of  the  word  is  in  the  New  Tes-  vol.  ii.  273. 

tament.     The  first  official  use  of  it  2  Prideaux,  ii.  572;  see  Herzfeld, 

was  for  Gamaliel,  the   grandson   of  iii.  253-257. 


63 


3  Derenbourg,  117. 


498  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

"  *  the  people.'  '  Yes,'  replied  they,  '  peace  to  the 
" '  men  of  the  people 1  who  accomplish  the  work  of 
"  '  Aaron,  and  no  peace  to  the  sons  of  Aaron  who  are 
"  '  not  like  Aaron.'  " 

It  is  a  striking  illustration  of  the  homage  paid  even 
in  that  ceremonial  age  to  the  Teacher  above  the  Priest. 
It  is  a  noble  protest,  worthy  of  the  days  of  Isaiah,  in 
behalf  of  the  claims  of  moral  and  intellectual  over 
official  eminence.  And  when,  in  the  trial  of  Herod 
for  his  lawless  violence,  the  High  Priest  orov- 

b.  c.  47. 

elled  before  him,  it  was  Shemaiah  who  re- 
buked the  cowardice  of  his  colleagues ;  it  was  Abtalion 
who  i  by  his  habitual  caution  conciliated  them.  Each 
spoke  in  exact  accordance  with  the  peculiar  spirit  en- 
shrined in  their  traditional  sayings.  We  see  the  sturdy 
independence  of  the  maxim  of  Shemaiah,  "  Love  work, 
"  hate  domination,  and  have  no  relations  with  those  in 
"  authority ;  "  the  worldly  prudence  of  the  maxim  of 
Abtalion,  "  Measure  well  your  words,  else  you  will 
"  be  banished  to  the  stagnant 2  waters  of  bad  doc- 
"  trines." 

It  was,  perhaps,  still  in  accordance  with  the  tone  of 
Abtalion's  teaching  that  in  the  siege,  when  the  High 
Priest  Antigonus  defended  Jerusalem  against  Herod, 
they  both  agreed  in  counselling  submission,  and  were 
both  spared  by  him.3 

It  would  seem  that  the  chief  places  in  the  college  of 
The  sons  teachers  were  next  occupied  by  an  obscure 
„f  Bether.    family>    u  the    sons  of   Bether."      They  were 

1  Or  "men  of  the  Gentiles,"  in  somewhat  subtler  sense  is  given  tc 
allusion  to  their  foreign  descent  them  by  Maiinonides  (Ibid.):  "Use 
Ulaphall,  ii.  284).  "  no  ambiguous  expressions;  other- 

2  The  meaning  of  these  words  is  "  wise  you  will  be  accused  of  heresy.' 
much  disputed.     Derenbourg  (148)  '  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  1,  1. 
j-terprets   them   as   above.      But   a 


lect.  l.  hillel.  499 

discussing  one  of  the  trivial  ceremonial  questions  which 
then,  as  on  later  occasions  both  in  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  Church,  preoccupied  the  main  interest  of 
theological  schools.  It  was  the  grave  problem  (as  it 
seemed  to  them)  whether  the  Paschal  lamb  might  be 
killed  on  the  Sabbath.  They  had  heard  of  a  famous1 
Babylonian  teacher.  His  name  was  Hillel.  hum. 
He  answered  in  the  affirmative,  with  reasons  B'  c" 36' 
from  analogy,  from  the  text,  and  from  the  context. 
They  refused  his  decision,  until  he  said  "  I  am  content 
"  to  be  punished  if  my  decision  has  not  been  given  to 
"  me  by  Shemaiah  and  Abtalion."  They  had  before 
regarded  him  as  a  stranger  from  Babylon ;  they  now 
welcomed  him  as  their  chief.  "  Whose  fault  was  it," 
"  he  said,  that  you  had  recourse  to  a  Babylonian  ?  — 
"  you  had  not  paid  due  attention  to  Shemaiah  and 
"  Abtalion,  the  two  great  men  of  the  age,  who  were 
"  with  you  all  the  time."  It  was  again  a  triumph  of  in- 
trinsic over  official  authority,  and  the  submission  of  the 
sons  of  Bether  was  long  remembered  as  an  example  of 
admirable  modesty.2 

This  is  the  first  public  appearance  of  unquestionably 
the  most  eminent  teacher  of  the  generation  of  Judaism 
immediately  preceding  the  Christian  era. 

Like  Ezra,  to  whom  his  countrymen  often  compared 
him,  Hillel  belonged  to  the  vast  Babylonian  settle- 
ment. Unlike  Ezra,  he  was  not  of  the  Priestly  class; 
but,  like  One  who  was  shortly  to  come  after  him,  de- 
scended from  the  house  of  David  ; 3  and,  like  that  other 
One,  a  humble  workman,  drawn  to  Jerusalem  only  by 

1  It  is  possible    that   the   sons  of  2  Derenbourg,  179,  180. 

Bether  themselves  were  from  Baby-  a  i.  e.  from  Abigail,  David's  wife, 

onia.     See  Josephus,  Ant.,  xviii.  2,  Ewald    (Jahrbuch,    66),    who    well 

2;  Ewald,  Jahrbuch  der  Bibl.     Wis-  points  out  the  illustration  it  afforda 

tenschaft,  x.  67.  of  the  Gospel  history. 


500  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

the  thirst  "  for  hearing  and  asking  questions."  He 
came  with  his  brother  Shebna,  and  worked  for  the 
scanty  remuneration  of  half  a  denarius  —  the  coin 
known  in  Latin  as  "  victoriatus,"  in  Greek  as  "  tropai- 
"  con."  from  the  figure  of  the  goddess  Victory  upon  it. 
This  he  divided  between  the  pay  for  his  lodgings  and 
the  pay  to  the  door-keeper  of  the  school  where  She- 
maiah  and  Abtalion  taught.  On  a  certain  occasion, 
when  he  had  failed  in  his  wTork,  the  churlish  door- 
keeper would  not  let  him  enter.  It  was  the  eve  of 
the  Sabbath,  there  were  no  lights  stirring,  and  he  took 
advantage  of  the  darkness  to  climb  to  the  window-sill 
to  listen.  It  was  a  winter  night,  and  the  listening 
youth  was  first  benumbed  and  then  buried  three  cubits 
deep  under  a  heavy  snow-fall.  As  the  day  dawned, 
Shemaiah  turned  to  his  colleague,  and  said  :  "  Dear 
"  brother  Abtalion,  why  is  our  school  so  dark  this 
"  morning  ?  "  They  turned  to  the  window,  and  found 
it  darkened  by  a  motionless  human  form,  enveloped  in 
the  snowflakes.  They  brought  him  down,  bathed, 
rubbed  him  with  oil,  placed  him  before  the  fire  —  in 
short,  broke,  for  his  sake,  their  Sabbatical  repose,  say- 
ing :  "  Surely  he  must  be  worth  a  violation  of  the  Sab- 
"  bath."  x  He  was,2  in  regard  to  the  traditionary  lore, 
what  Ezra  was  supposed  to  have  been  in  regard  to  the 
written  law.  He  it  was  who  collected  and  codified  the 
floating  maxims  which  guided  the  schools.  He  rose  to 
the  highest  place  in  the  Sanhedrin  ;  he  was  honored 3 
by   Herod ;    he   himself  honored  what   there   was   in 

1  The  story  has  often  been  given,  3  "  Herodes  senem  Ilillel  in  magno 

b  it  at  the  greatest   length  in  Deli-  "  honore  habuit  ;  namque  hi  homines 

tzsch's  Jesus  and  HUM,  10,  11.    See  "  regem  ilium  esse   non   oegre  fere- 

also   Jost,    i.     248-257.      Deutsch's  "bant  "  (Lightfoot,  Harm.  Ev.,  470, 

Remains,  30,  31.  quoted  in  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  i 

9  See  Kitto,  Bibl.  Cyclop.,  iii.  167.  796). 


Lect.  L. 


HILLEL.  501 


Herod  worthy  of  honor.  He,  with  Shammai,  was  ex- 
cused from  the  oath  exacted  by  Herod  from  all  hia 
other  subjects.1  He  became  not  merely  the  b  o  3q 
founder  of  a  school,  but  the  ancestor  of  a 
family,  all  of  whom  were  imbued  with  his  teaching  — 
Simon,  Gamaliel,  and  a  second  Hillel.  In  his  lifetime 
he  was  overshadowed  by  his  rival  Shammai,  the  rigid 
advocate  of  the  strictest  literalism.  At  first  sight,  as 
we  turn  the  dreary  pages  of  the  Mishna,  there  seems 
to  be  little  to  choose  between  them.2  The  disputes 
between  himself  and  Shammai  turn  for  the  most  part 
on  points  so  infinitely  little  that  the  small  controversies 
of  ritual  and  dogma  which  have  vexed  the  soul  of 
Christendom  seem  great  in  comparison.  They  are 
worth  recording  only  as  accounting  for  the  obscurity 
into  which  they  have  fallen,  and  also  because  Churches 
of  all  ages  and  creeds  may  be  instructed  by  the  re- 
flection that  questions  of  the  modes  of  eating  and  cook- 
ing, and  walking  and  sitting,  seemed  as  important  to 
the  teachers  of  Israel  —  on  the  eve  of  their  nation's 
destruction,  and  of  the  greatest  religious  revolution 
that  the  world  has  seen  —  as  the  questions  of  dress 
or  posture,  or  modes  of  appointment,  or  verbal  for- 
mulas, have  seemed  to  contending  schools  of  Christian 
theology.3 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  10,  4;  De-  x.  4.  De  Lavacris,  i.  5,  iv.  1,  x.  De 
renbourg,  191,  464.  Fluxu,  i.  1,  ii.  6,  v.  9,  x.  i.     De  Liq- 

2  See  Keim,  Jesus  of  Nazara,  i.  uidis,L  3,  4,  iv.  5.  De  Fructus  peti- 
S45.  olis,  iii.  6.    De  Sacrificiis,  iv.  1.     De 

3  De  Benedictionibus,  viii.  1-7.  Profanis,  i.  2,  viii.  1.  De  Primo- 
De  Septimo  Anno,  iv.,  viii.  De  Pro-  genitis,v.2.  De  Poenis  Excidii,  i.  6. 
.nissis,  i.  De  Vasis,  ix.  2,  xviii.  1,  xx.  De  Votis,  i.  1-9,  ii.  2,  7.  De  Principio 
2,  xxii.  4,  xxvi.  6,  xxix.  8.  De  Anni,  i.  1.  De  Sacris  Solemn.,  i.  1-3, 
Decimis,  iii.  v.  De  Tectoriis,  ii.  3,  ii.  2-4.  De  Sabbato,  i.  5.  6,  xxi.  2,  3. 
r.  3,  11,  xi.  1,  4-6,  xiii.  1,  xv.  8,  De  Term.  Sabbat.,  i.  1.  De  Paschate, 
Kviii,  1,  8.     De  Puritatibus,  ix.  6,  7,  viii.  8.  De  Tabernaculis,  i.  1,  7,  iii.  5 


502  HEROD.  ^  Lect.  L. 

The  net  of  casuistry  spread  itself  over  every  depart- 
ment of  human  life,  and  the  energies  of  the  Rabbis 
were  spent  (to  use  the  metaphor1  adopted  by  them 
and  thence  transferred  to  other  systems)  in  "  tying  " 
and  "  untying,"  in  "  binding  "  and  "  loosing,"  the  knots 
which  they  either  found  or  made  in  this  complicated 
web.  In  this  occupation  their  resort  was  not  to  any 
original  or  profound  principles  of  action,  but  to  maxims 
of  authority  handed  down,  like  legal  precedents,  from 
former  Rabbis.  "  The  Doctors  have  thus  spoken  "  — 
"  It  has  been  said  by  them  of  old  time  "  — "I  have 
"  never  heard  of  such  a  maxim  or  practice  before  "  — 
were  the  solutions  then,  as  often  since,  offered  for 
every  difficulty.  Memory  thus  became  the  one  indis- 
pensable gift  of  an  accomplished  teacher  —  "a  pit  that 
"  lets  not  out  a  drop  of  water."  2  The  variety  and 
the  triviality  of  these  decisions  —  shortly  to  be  con- 
trasted with  the  unchanging  force  of  the  inspired  in- 
tuitions and  simple  convictions  of  a  few  unlettered 
peasants  —  are  well  summed  up  in  a  single  chapter  of 
the  Mishna.  There  was  a  weighty  question,  which  had 
run  down  through  all  the  "pairs"  of  teachers,  on  the 
point  whether  there  was  or  was  not  to  be  an  imposition 
of  hands  in  the  ordination  of  victims  for  sacrifice. 
Joseph,  the  son  of  Joazar,  said,  "  There  shall  no  hands 
"  be  imposed  ;  "  Joseph,  the  son  of  John,  said,  "  There 
"  shall  be  hands  imposed."  Joshua,  the  son  of  Pera- 
chiah,  said,  "  There  shall  no  hands  be  imposed ; " 
Nittai,  of  Arbela,  said,  "  There  shall  be  hands  im- 
"  posed."     Judah,  the  son  of  Tobai,  said,  "  There  shall 

1  Matt.  xvi.   19;  xviii.    18.      For         2  Hausrath,  Zeit   Christi,  82,  89 
l.he  overwhelming  proof  of  the  Jew-     Josephus,  Vit.,  c.  2. 
fih  use  of  this  metaphor,  see  Light- 
oot  (ii.  216). 


Lect.  L. 


HILLEL.  503 


"  be  no  hands  imposed ;  "  Simeon,  the  son  of  Shetach, 
said,  "  There  shall  be  hands  imposed."  Shemaiah  said 
"  There  shall  be  no  hands  imposed  ; "  Abtalion  said, 
"There  shall  be  hands  imposed."  Hillel  and  Mena- 
hem  do  not  contradict  each  other  ;  but  Menahem 
went  out,  and  Shammai  came  in.  Shammai  said, 
"  There  shall  be  no  hands  imposed ; "  Hillel  said, 
"  There  shall  be  hands  imposed."  *  Such  was  the  al- 
ternate "binding"  and  "loosing"  which  occupied 
the  ecclesiastical  authorities  of  the  Jewish  Church  for 
two  hundred  years.  There  is  a  profound  pathos,  and 
at  the  same  time  a  universal  warning,  in  the  story  re- 
corded in  the  Mishna  of  the  deputation  from  the  San- 
heclrin  which  came  to  the  High  Priest  on  the  eve  of 
the  Day  of  Atonement,  with  the  urgent  appeal :  "  0 
"  my  lord  the  High  Priest,  we  are  the  representatives 
"  of  the  great  Sanhedrin,  and  thou  art  our  representa- 
"  tive.  We  adjure  thee  by  Him  whose  name  dwells  in 
"  this  Temple  that  thou  wilt  not  change  any  of  all  the 
"  things  which  we  have  said  unto  thee."  2  He  went 
away  and  wept  to  think  that  they  should  suspect  him 
of  heresy,  and  they  went  away  and  wept  to  think  that 
they  did  suspect  him  of  heresy.  And  what  was  the 
heresy  for  which  those  tears  were  shed,  and  for  which 
this  solemn  adjuration  was  made  ?  It  was  that  the 
Sadducee  High  Priests  had  "  in  that  most  difficult 
"  question  of  taking  the  proper  handful  of  the  grains 
"  of  incense  "  preferred  to  put  them  into  the  censer  out- 
side the  veil,  instead  of  adopting  the  Pharisaic  inter- 
pretation of  reserving  the  fumigation  till  the  veil  was 
passed.  How  many  tears  of  grief  and  rage  have  been 
shed,  how  many  tests  and  adjurations  have  been  im- 

i  "Clwgijah,"  ii.  2,  in  Surenhu-         2  Ibid.  Yoma,  i.  5. 
'us'  Mishna,  i.  417,418. 


504  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

posed,  for  questions  of  a  like  character,  though,  it  may 
be,  of  more  intrinsic  importance  ! 

Yet  still,  as  in  the  dim  shadows  of  Alexandrian  Ju- 
daism there  were  the  clear  streaks  as  of  the  coming 
day  in  the  ethical  treatises  of  Philo  —  as  in  our  own 
scholastic  ages  there  were  the  harbingers  of  a  future 
Reformation  in  Scotus  Erigena,  Anselm,  Roger  Bacon, 
and  Wycliffe  —  so  in  the  yet  deeper  darkness  of  the 
Rabbinical  schools  of  Palestine,  Hillel  was,  as  it  were, 
the  morning  star  of  the  bright  dawn  that  was  rising  in 
the  hills  of  Galilee.  It  has  been  reserved  for  mod- 
ern times  to  recognize  his  extraordinary  merit.  The 
teacher  over  whom  both  Josephus  and  Eusebius  pass 
without  a  word  saw  further  than  any  other  man  of  his 
generation  into  the  heart  and  essence  of  religion.  In 
him  the  freedom,  the  elevation,  the  latitude  which  had 
breathed  through  the  poetic  imagery  and  grand  idealism 
of  the  Psalmists  and  Prophets  in  the  days  of  the  higher 
inspirations  of  Judaism,  now  expressed  themselves  for 
the  first  time  in  the  direct,  practical  maxims  of  what 
we  may  call  the  modern  thought  of  the  Herodian,  the 
Augustan  age.  Even  amidst  the  trivial  casuistry  and 
ceremonial  etiquettes  which  furnish  the  materials  for 
the  larger  part  of  Hillel's  decisions,  they  lean,  not 
indeed  invariably,  but  as  a  general  rule,  to  the  more 
liberal  and  spiritual  side,  and  they  encourage  the  rights 
of  the  congregation  and  the  nation  as  against  the 
claims  of  a  grasping1  sacerdotal  caste.  And  even 
where  he  appeared  to  submit,  he  introduced,  if  he  did 
not  create,  a  logical  process,  by  which,  under  a  peculiar 
name2  acquired  in  his  hands,  he  contrived  to  "min- 
'<  imize  "  the  stringent  effects  not  only  of  the  tradition, 

1  See  Derenbourg,  180-190.  2  "  Prosbol."      See    Derenbourg, 

188. 


Cect  l.  eqxlel  505 

but  of  the  Law  itself.  But  there  are  sayings  which 
tower  not  only  far  above  those  questions  of  tithe, 
anise,  and  cummin,  into  the  weightier  matters  of  the 
Law,  but  above  the  merely  prudential  aphorisms  of  the 
earlier  Rabbis,  and  which  must  have  created  around 
them  an  atmosphere,  not  only  in  which  they  them- 
selves could  live  and  be  appreciated,  but  which  must 
have  rendered  more  possible  both  the  origination  and 
the  acceptance  of  any  other  sayings  of  a  kindred  nat- 
ure in  that  or  the  coming  age.  "  Be  gentle  as  Hillel,1 
"  and  not  harsh  as  Shammai,"  was  the  proverb  Teaching  0f 
which  marked  the  final  estimate  of  the  latitu-  Shammai- 
dinarian  compared  with  the  rigorist  teacher,  when  the 
spirit  of  partisanship  had  cooled  before  the  calmer  judg- 
ment of  posterity.  Two  practical  sayings  alone  have 
survived  of  the  sterile  teaching  of  Shammai.  "  Let  thy 
"repetition2  of  the  Law  be  at  a  fixed  hour,"  was  the 
hard  and  fast  line  by  which  his  disciples  were  to  be 
bound  down,  as  by  an  inexorable  necessity,  to  the 
punctual  reading  of  the  Sacred  Book,  as  of  a  breviary, 
at  hours  never  to  be  lost  sight  of.  "  Speak  little  and 
"  do  much,  but  do  what  thou  hast  to  do  with  a  cheerful 
"  countenance."  That  voice  has  a  touching  accent,  as 
though  he  felt  that  the  frequent  professions  and  au- 
stere demeanor  which  were  congenial  to  his  natural 
disposition  might  perchance  prove  a  stumbling-block 
to  the  cause  which  was  dear  to  him. 

But  when  from  these  "  scrannel  pipes  "  of  Shammai 
we  turn  to  his  less  popular  but  more  deeply  beloved 
rival,  we  find  ourselves  listening  to  strains  of  a  far 
higher  mood.  "  Be  of  Aaron's  disciples,  who  loved 
"  peace,  pursued  peace,  loved   all   creatures,   and   at- 

1  Ewaldj  Jahrbiicher,  x.  69.  2  Mishna,  Pirke  Aboth,  i.  15,  atd 

Derenbourg,  191. 
64 


506  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

"  tracted  jhem  towards1  the  Law."  Although  not  a 
Teaching  priest  himself,  and  by  his  position  thrown  into 
of  Hiiiei.  antagonism  to  the  order,  he  yet  had  the  rare 
merit  of  seeing  in  an  ancient  institution  the  better  side 
of  its  traditions  and  its  capabilities,  and  of  commending 
it  to  his  countrymen.  "  He  who  makes  his  own  name 
"  famous,  and  does  not  increase  in  wisdom,  shall  perish. 
"  He  who  learns  nothing  is  as  though  he  had  done 
"  something  worthy  of  death.  He  who  makes  a  profit 
"  of  the  crowning  glory  of  a  teacher's  place,  away  with 
"him!"2  This  represents  the  religious  passion  for 
mental  improvement  —  the  sacred  duty  of  diligence, 
which  carries  within  it  the  stimulus  of  all  modern 
science,  the  true  ideal  of  "  the  scholar."  It  shows  also 
the  Socratic3  disinterestedness  in  imparting  knowledge 
transplanted  into  a  sphere  where  it  will  give  birth  to 
one  of  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  a  future 
apostle.  "  If  I  am  not  mine  own,  who  is  mine  ?  yet,  if 
"  I  am  mine  own,  what  am  I  ?  And  if  not  now, 
"  when  ?  "  It  is  one  of  those  enigmas  in  which,  from 
the  time  of  Solomon  downwards,  the  Jewish  sages  de- 
lighted, yet  full  of  deep  meaning.4  It  expresses  the 
threefold  mission  placed  before  the  human  soul  —  the 
call  to  absolute  independence,  the  worthlessness  of  self- 
ish isolation,  the  necessity  of  immediate  exertion  to 
fortify  the  one,  and  to  correct  the  other.  "  Had  Hil- 
"lel,"  says  Ewald,  "left  us  but  this  single  saying,  we 

1  Ewald,  v.  73,  74.  Pirke  Aboth,  the  first  part  differently  :  "  He  who 
i.  12  (Surenhusius,  iv.  416,  417),  "disguises  the  sacred  name  of  God 
where  are  given  the  traditional  stories  "  shall  perish."  Derenbourg  inter- 
of  Aaron,  which  justify  the  charac-  prets  the  third  differently  (133). 
teristics  here  ascribed  to  him.  Com-  3  See  Lecture  XLVI.  and  1  Cor. 
Dare  Mai.  ii.  5.  ix.  1-27. 

2  Pirke  Aboth,  i.  13  (Surenhusius,         4  Pirke  Aboth,  i.  14  (Surenhusius 
v.   417).     Ewald  (v.  74)  interprets     iv.  418). 


Lect.  l.  hillel.  507 

"should  be  forever  grateful  to  him,  for  scarce  any- 
"  thing  can  be  said  more  briefly,1  more  profoundly,  or 
"  more  earnestly." 

A  heathen  came  to  Shammai,  and  begged  10  be 
taught  the  whole  Law  whilst  he  stood  on  one  foot. 
Shammai,  indignant  at  the  thought  that  the  Law  could 
be  taught  so  simply  and  so  shortly,  drove  him  forth 
with  the  staff  which  he  held  in  his  hand.  The  Gentile 
went  to  Hillel,  who  accepted  him,  and  said :  "  What 
"thou  wouldest  not  thyself,  do  not  to  thy  neighbor. 
"  This  is  the  whole  Law,  and  its  application  is,  <  Go  and 
"  *  do  this.'  " 2  We  start  as  we  read  the  familiar  rule, 
but  even  Hillel  was  not  the  first  who  uttered  it.  Al- 
ready it  had  dropped  from  the  lips  of  Isocrates  in 
Greece, 3  and  Confucius  in  China,  yet  not  the  less  orig- 
inal was  it  in  the  mouth  of  each ;  and  most  of  all  was 
it  original  in  the  mouth  of  Him  who,  in  the  next  gen- 
eration, made  it  not  the  maxim  of  a  sage,  "but  the 
"  golden  rule  " 4  of  a  world.  "  Wish  not  to  be  better 
"  than  the  whole  community,  nor  be  confident  of 
"  thyself  till  the  clay  of  thy  death."  "  This,"  Ewald 
remarks,  "is  a  strange  truth  for  a  Pharisee  to  have 
"  uttered ;  one  which,  had  the  Pharisees  followed,  no 
"  Pharisee  would  have  ever  arisen.  Yet,"  he  adds,  with 
true  appreciation  of  the  elevation  of  the  best  spirits 
above  their  party,  "it  is  not  the  only  example  of  a 
"  distinguished  teacher  protesting  against  the  funcla- 
"  mental  error  of  his  own  peculiar  tendencies."  "  Think 
"  not  of  anything  ihat  it  will  not  be  heard,  for  heard 
"  at  last  it  surely  will  be ;  think  not  that  thou  canst 

1  Ewald,  v.  73.  peated  the  maxim  in  another  form: 

8  Ibid.  70,  71.  "Judge  not  thy  neighbor   till  thou 

3  Isocrates  to   Nicocles,    and  see     "hast  put  thyself    in   his   place." 
Lecture  XLV.  Ewald,  Jahrbilcher,  \.  75. 

*  Malt.  vii.  12.     Hillel  himself  re- 


508  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

"  calculate  on  the  time  when  thou  shalt  have  anything; 
"  for  how  easily  will  it  come  to  pass  that  thou  shalt 
"  never  have  it  at  all."  *  "  The  more  meat  at  his  ban- 
"  quets  a  man  hath,  so  much  the  more  is  the  food  for 
"  worms ;  the  more  wealth  he  hath,  so  much  the  more 
"  care ;  the  more  wives,  so  much  the  more  opening  for 
"superstition;  the  more  maid-servants,  so  much  the 
"  more  temptation  to  license ;  the  more  slaves,  so  much 
"  the  more  room  for  plunder.  But  the  more  of  Law, 
"  so  much  the  more  of  life ;  the  more  of  schools,  so 
"  much  the  more  of  wisdom ;  the  more  of  counsel,  so 
"  much  the  more  of  insight ;  the  more  of  righteousness, 
"  so  much  the  more  of  peace.  If  a  man  gains  a  good 
"  name,  he  gains  it  for  himself  alone  ;  if  he  gains  a 
"knowledge  of  the  Law,  it  is  for  eternal  life."  These 
are  maxims  which  are  more  than  philosophical ;  they 
are  almost  apostolical. 

It  is  not  needed  to  multiply  these  stories,  or  to  re- 
cite the  legendary  portents  which  hovered  round  the 
name  of  Hillel.  What  has  been  said  is  enough  to  show 
that,  as  in  modern  times  there  have  been  those  who, 
amongst  heretics  and  sectarians,  yet  were  catholic  — 
amongst  the  rigidly  orthodox,  were  yet  full  of  the 
freedom  which  belongs  to  scepticism  or  heterodoxy  — 
so  among  the  Pharisees  was  at  least  one  man  in  whom 
was  foreshadowed  the  spirit  of  the  coming  age,  in  the 
life  of  whose  maxims  was  the  death  of  his  sect,  in  the 
breadth  of  whose  character  was  the  pledge  that  he  or 
his  disciples  should  at  last  inherit  tl}e  earth,  and  be  the 
teachers  in  that  Jerusalem  which,  being  above,  is  free. 
In  the  schools  of  his  native  land  he  founded  .1  dynasty 
Daatu  of  of  scholars  :  Simeon,  Gamaliel,  and  the  second 
i.:1d!'6.      Hillel  —  his  son,  his  grandson,  and  his  great- 

1  Ewald,  Jahrbucher,  x.  75. 


Lkct.  l.  hillel.  509 

grandson.  "  Ah  !  the  tender-hearted,  the  pious,  the 
"  disciple  of  Ezra,"  was  the  lament  over  his  grave.1  In 
the  same  grave  he  and  his  rival  Shammai  rest  side  by 
side  at  Meiron,2  amidst  the  Rabbis  who  were  drawn 
thither  from  Safed,  the  holy  city  of  a  later  age.  But 
his  fame  soon  perished ;  it  is  only  now,  after  an  ob- 
scurity of  many  centuries,  that  he  has  been  recognized 
to  be,  of  all  the  teachers  of  Judaea  at  that  time,  the 
one  who  most  nearly  approached  to  the  Light  that  was 
to  lighten  the  heathen  nations,  and  to  be  the  glory  of 
the  people  of  Israel. 

Yet,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  we  must  look  for  this 
realization,  even  for  this  preparation,  not  to  the  schools 
of  Jerusalem,  but  to  classes  in  which  Hillel  hardly  ven- 
tured to  expect  it.  "  No  uneducated  man,"  he  said,. 
"  easily  avoids  sin ;  no  man  of  the  people  can  be  pious. 
"  Where  there  are  no  men,  study  to  show  thyself  a 
"  man."  The  first  part  of  the  saying  partakes  of  the 
contraction  of  the  Pharisaic  circle  in  which  he  moved  -y 
the  last  part  shows  how  he  rose  above  it.  On  the  one 
hand  he  believed  that,  except  in  the  schools  of  the 
learned,  no  real  excellence  could  be  found ;  on  the 
other  hand  he  felt  that,  even  where  all  seems  blank 
and  void  of  interest,  it  is  never  too  late  to  hope  that 
a  true  man  may  discover  himself.  How  far  he  was 
wrong  in  the  first  of  these  sayings,  how  far  he  was 
right  in  the  second,  we  shall  see  as  we  proceed. 

From  the  small  casuistry  and  occasional  flashes  of 
inspiration  in  the  schools  of  Jerusalem  we  pass  to  the 
different  world  or  worlds,  which  even  within  the  nar- 
row limits  of  Palestine  were  to  be  found,  containing 
elements  of  life  as  unlike  those  which  prevailed  in  the 

1  Jost,  i.  263.  2  Robinson's   Researches,  vol.  iii 

334;  Later  Res..  37. 


510  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

cloisters  of  the  Temple  as  if  they  had  belonged  to  an- 
other country. 

We  first  turn  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  capital. 
It  is  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  Herodian 
Essenes.  age  that  the  valley  of  the  Jordan  then  leaped 
into  vast  prominence.  The  palaces,  the  baths,  the  race- 
courses, of  the  forests  and  gardens  of  Jericho  became 
the  resort  of  the  fashionable  world  of  that  time.  But 
side  by  side  with  these  sprang  up,  as  in  gypsy  encamp- 
ments, a  host  of  ascetics.  In  those  wild  jungles,  or  in 
the  maze  of  verdure  which  clings  to  the  spring  of 
Engedi,1  and  clusters  on  the  little  platform  by  the 
shores  of  the  Dead  Sea,  screened  from  the  upper  world 
behind  the  rocky  barrier  of  the  crags  which  overhang 
that  mysterious  lake,  swarmed  the  Essenian  hermits. 
It  is  true  that  in  every  town  in  Palestine  2  some  of 
them  were  to  be  found.  They  were  not  entirely  sepa- 
rated from  the  movement  of  the  capital.  There  was  a 
gate 3  in  the  city  which  bore  their  name  as  if  from  their 
frequenting  it.  More  than  once  we  hear  of  their  ap- 
pearances in  the  Temple.  Menahem,  the  Essene,  in 
his  playful  manner,  had  foretold  Herod's  greatness 
when  yet  an  innocent  child,  and,  remaining  faithful  to 
him  in  his  later  years,  was  raised  by  him 4  to  the 
second  place  in  the  Sanhedrin,  in  the  room  of  Sham- 
mai,  next  to  the  illustrious  Hillel.  But,  as  in  Egypt 
their  chief  haunt  was  by  the  shores  of  the  Lake  Mareo- 
tis,  so  in  Judaea  their  main  home  was  the  insulated 
oasis  beneath  the  haunts  of  the  wild  goats.  Their 
form  of  religion,  in  many  respects,  was  merely  Phari- 
saism in  excess.     Their  chief  rites  were  Pharisaic  or- 

1  Plin.,  //.  N.,  v.  15.  8  B.  J.,  vi.  4,  2. 

"•  Josephus,  B.  J".,  ii.  8,  4;  Pbilo,         *  See  Lightfoot,  ii.  200,  on  Matt 
Fragm.,  632.  xvii. 


Lbct.  l.  the  essenes.  511 

dinances  raised  to  a  higher  level.  The  common  meals, 
which  the  Pharisees  established  in  imitation  of  the 
solemn  banquets1  of  the  Priests  after  the  Temple  sac- 
rifices, were  elevated  by  the  Essenians  to  be  an  essen- 
tial part  of  their  worship.  But,  whereas  the  Pharisees, 
though  not  Priests,  yet  often  frequented  the  Temple 
ceremonies,  the  Essenians,  in  their  isolation,  were  con- 
strained to  invent  a  ritual  for  themselves  —  a  ritual  so 
simple  that  it  almost  escaped  observation  at  the  time, 
yet  so  expressive  that  its  near  likeness  has,  in  altered 
forms,  not  only  survived  the  magnificent  worship  of 
Jerusalem,  but  become  the  centre  of  ceremonials  yet 
more  gorgeous.  For  the  first  time,  the  common  meal 
without  a  sacrifice  became  a  religious  ordinance,  in 
which  the  loaves2  of  bread  were  arranged  by  the 
baker,  and  the  blessing  asked  and  the  repast  trans- 
acted 3  with  such  solemnity  that  their  little  dining-halls 
seemed  for  the  moment  to  be  transformed  into  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  consecrated  inclosure. 

"  The  Pharisees,"  said  their  Sadducaic  rivals,  "  want 
"  to  clean  the  face  of  the  sun."  And  so  to  the  Essenes 
cleanliness  was  not  only  next  to  godliness,  but,  as  re- 
gards worship,  we  may  almost  say  that  it  was  godli- 
ness.4 The  badges  of  initiation  were  the  apron  or 
towel  for  wiping  themselves  after  the  bath,  the  hatchet 
for  digging  holes  to  put  away  filth.     Some  Churches  in 

1  Derenbourg,  142-162.  haustive  essays  of  Professor   Light- 

2  The   Essenes   are   described    in     foot  on  the  Colossians,  83-94,  115— 
Josephus,  Ant.,  xiii.  5,  9;  xviii.  1,  5;     178. 

B.  J.,  ii  8,   2-13;  Plin.,  Ep.,  v.  15,  8  B.  J.,  ii.  8,  5.     The  mention  of 

17;   Philo,   ii.  457,  471,   632.      For  the  cook  seems  to  imply  something 

ample   discussions,  which  supersede  else  than  bread  —  probably  fish, 

any  need  for  further  detail  here,  see  4  Josephus,  B.  J.,  ii.  8,  5,  7;  Pro- 

Dr.  Ginsburg's  article  on  the  Essenes,  fessor  Lightfoot  on  Colossians,  120, 

n  Kitto's  Cyclopaedia,  Keim's  Jesus  Kuenen,  iii.  128,  129,  131,  133. 
\f  Nazara,  i.  358-368,  and  the  ex- 


512  HEROD.  Lect.  I* 

later  days  have  insisted  on  the  absolute  necessity  of 
immersion  once  in  a  life.  But  not  only  did  the  Es- 
senes  go  through  the  bath  on  their  first  admission,  but 
day  by  day  the  same  cleansing  process  was  undergone  ; 
day  by  day  it  was  held  unlawful  even  to  name  the 
name  of  God  without  the  preliminary  baptism ;  day 
by  day  fresh  white  clothes  were  put  on  ;  day  by  day, 
after  the  slightest  occasion,1  they  bathed  again.  Down 
to  the  minutest  points  cleanliness  was  the  one  sacra- 
mental sign.  The  primitive  Christians  had  their  daily 
Communion  ;  the  Essenes  had  their  daily  Baptism.2  In 
the  deep  bed  of  the  neighboring  Jordan,  in  the  warm 
springs  and  the  crystal  streams  of  Engedi,  in  the  rivu- 
lets and  the  tanks  of  Jericho,  they  had  ample  oppor- 
tunities for  this  purification  which  in  the  dry  hills  and 
streets  of  Jerusalem  they  would  have  lacked. 

When  from  these  outward  signs  of  the  society  we 
descend  to  its  inner  life,  the  difficulty  of  tracing  its 
affinities  is  increased.  In  this  respect  "  the  Essene  3  is 
"  the  great  enigma  of  Hebrew  history."  On  the  one 
hand,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  solution  of  the  enigma 
should  have  been  sought  in  the  conclusion  that  the 
early  Christians4  concerning  whom  the  Jewish  his- 
torian is  strangely  silent,  and  the  Essenes  concerning 
whom  the  Evangelists  are  no  less  strangely  silent,  were 
one  and  the  same.  The  community  of  property,  the 
abstinence  from  oaths,  the  repugnance  to  sacrificial 
ordinances,  the  purity  of  life,  which  enkindled  the  ad- 
miration alike  of  the  prosaic  Josephus  and  the  poetic 
Philo,  have  one,  and  one  only  counterpart,  in  the  com- 

1  Dercnbourg,  170.  See   Professor   Lightfoot,  132,  1G2; 

2  This  was  the  case,  even  without  Dercnbourg,  165. 
identifying    them    with    the    y/jifpo-  8  Professor  Lightfoot,  82. 
OctTTTiirrai,  daily  or  morning  bathers.  4  See  the  ingenious  essays  of  De 

Quincey,  vi.  270,  ix.  253. 


Lect.  l.  the  essenes.  513 

ing  generation.  On  the  other  hand,  their  rigid  Sab- 
batarianism, their  monastic  celibacy,  their  seclusior 
from  social  life,  their  worship  *  of  the  rising  sun,  point 
to  influences  wholly  unlike  those  which  guided  the  first 
growth  of  the  Christian  society.  But  thus  much  seems 
clear.  A  community  whose  observances,  if  exagger- 
ated, were  so  simple,  and  whose  moral  standard,  if 
eccentric,  was  so  elevated,  must  have  drawn  to  the  out- 
skirts of  their  body  individuals,  even  classes  of  men  that 
would  not  have  been  numbered  amongst  them. 
Sometimes  it  will  be  a  Hermit2  who  attaches 
to  his  side  for  three  years  the  future  historian  and  sol- 
dier of  the  age ;  dressed  in  a  matting  of  palm  leaves 
or  the  like,  eating  whatever  fruits  he  picked  up  in  the 
woods ;  like  them  a  constant  bather  both  by  night 
and  day.  At  another  time  it  will  be  a  young  The 
Priest,  who  shall  look  like  one  possessed  by  a  BaPtIst 
ghost  or  a  demon,3  who,  from  his  boyhood  has  lived  in 
these  wild  thickets,  seated  in  his  hut  or  amidst  the 
waving  canes  of  the  Jordan ; 4  with  his  shaggy  locks 
loose-flowing  round  his  head  (if  his  5  Nazarite  vow  had 
been  duly  performed) ;  like  the  dervishes  6  of  modern 
days,  clothed  only  in  a  rough  blanket  of  camel's  hair 
fastened  round  his  bare  limbs  with  a  girdle  of  skin  ; 
who  shall  undertake  to  be  the  universal  Bather  or 
Baptizer  of  the  district ;  who  shall  catch  for  that  puri- 
fying plunge 7  the  tax-collectors  from  Jericho,  and  the 
learned  Scribes  or  Levites  travelling  thither  from  Jeru- 
salem, or  the  soldiers  marching  down  the  Jordan  val- 
ley, as   once  with  Pompey   before,   to   some  skirmish 

1  Professor  Lightfoot,  88.  *  Justin  adv.,  Tryph.,  c.  51;  Matt. 

2  See  the  description  of  Banus,  the  xi.  7,  9. 
oreceptor  of  Josephus,  Vita,  c.  2.  5  Luke  i.  15. 

3  John  i.  21;  Matt.  xi.  18.  6  Light's  Travels,  135. 


7  Luke  iii.  3-15. 


Co 


514  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

with  the  Nabathsean  Arabs.  In  the  spots  chosen  for 
his  haunts,  in  his  scanty  fare,  in  his  frequent  absti- 
nence, in  his  long-sustained  ejaculations  of  prayer,  in 
his  insistence  on  personal  ablution,  Johanan,  or  John, 
John  the  tne  son  °f  Zechariah,  is  closely  allied  with  the 
Baptist.  Essenian  fraternity.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand, 
his  career  breathed  the  spirit  not  of  the  Essenian  seers, 
but  of  the  prophetic  force  of  older  days,  which  seemed 
to  show  that  Elijah  had  started  again  into  life,  or  that 
Jeremiah,  who  had  visited  Judas  Maccabseus  in  his 
dreams,  was  once  more  on  the  soil  of  his  beloved  Pales- 
tine, or  that  the  voice  which  announced  the  return  of 
the  Exiles  was  once  more  sounding  in  the  solitudes  of 
the  Jordan.  The  grandeur  of  his  mission  lay  in  the 
keen  discernment  with  which  he  seized  hold  of  the  one 
ordinance  which  had,  as  it  were,  been  engendered  by  the 
full-flowing  stream  of  the  "  Descending  river,"  to  bring 
before  his  countrymen  the  truth,  ever  old,  yet  ever 
new,  that  the  cleanness,  the  whiteness  of  the  human 
heart  is  the  only  fitting  preparation  for  the  Divine  pres- 
ence. He  took  advantage  of  that  leap  into  the  river 
or  the  reservoir  to  call  upon  one  and  all  to  spring  into 
a  new  life,  to  wash  off  the  stains  upon  their  honor  and 
their  consciences,  which  choked  up  the  pores  of  their 
moral  texture,  and  impeded  the  influx  of  the  new 
truths  with  which  the  air  around  them  was  shortly  to 
be  impregnated.1  He  proclaimed  the  one  indispensable 
condition  of  all  spiritual  religion,  that  the  regenera- 
tion of  the  human  spirit2  was  to  be  accomplished,  not 
by  ceremonies  or   opinions,  not  by  succession   or   de- 

1  Matt.  iii.  1,  4,  11,  12;  Luke  v.  "penitence"  or  "repentance,"  but 
33.  a    "regeneration    or    revolution    of 

2  ixfrdvom  is,  in  the  New  Testa-  "  mind,"  "  a  second  birth  of  the 
aaent,  and  the  early  Fathers,  the  "moral  nature."  Matt.  iii.  11, 
lame    as   naMyyevetria  —  not  merely  Luke  iii.  3. 


Lect.  l.  the  synagogues.  515 

scent,  but  by  moral  uprightness.  The  substitution  of 
the  wholesome,  invigorating,  simple  process  of  the 
bath,  in  which  the  head  and  body  and  limbs  should  be 
submerged  in  the  rushing  river,  for  the  sanguinary, 
costly  gifts  of  the  sacrificial  slaughter-house,  was  a 
living  representation  in  a  single  act  of  the  whole  pro- 
phetic teaching  of  the  supremacy  of  Duty.  This  start- 
ling note  of  the  universal  need  for  the  creation  of  a 
new  morality,  for  a  "  transformation  of  the  mind," 
struck  a  chord  which  had  not  vibrated  since  the  days 
of  Malachi.  And  of  this  the  nearest  contemporary 
likeness  was  in  the  Essenian  maxim,  "  The  approach 
"  to  Duty  is  as  a  battle-field,"  and  in  the  three  Es- 
senian virtues,  "  Love  of  God,  love  of  goodness,  and 
"love  of  man."  *  Wherever  any  souls  were  penetrated 
with  the  sense  of  this  truth,  as  the  paramount  defini- 
tion of  their  religious  calling,  there  a  vast  stride  was 
made  beyond  the  actual  religions  of  the  ancient  world, 
and  towards  the  ideal  of  all  of  them. 

But  there  was  yet  a  wider  area  to  be  winnowed  by 
the  spirit  of  the  coming  time  than  either  theTheSyna_ 
schools  of  the  Temple  or  the  shores  of  the  e°sues- 
Dead  Sea.  And  even  the  Essenian  teaching  at  its 
highest  point  was  but  as  the  flame 2  of  a  blazing  torch 
that  would  pale  and  fade  away  before  the  steady  sun- 
shine of  the  coming  day. 

Throughout  the  country,  in  town  and  village,  in- 
creasing since  the  time  of  Ezra,  had  sprung  up  a  whole 
system  of  worship,  which  to  the  Pentateuch  and  the 
Prophets  and  the  early  Psalmists  was  unknown.  The 
main  religious  instruction  and  devotion  of  the  nation 
was  now  carried   on,  not  in  the  Temple,  but  in  the 

1  Josephus,     Ant.,     xviii.     1,    5.         l  John  v.  35  (Godet). 
Philo,  Vit.  Contemp.,  877. 


51 G  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

synagogues.1  Wherever  there  were  as  many  as  ten 
who  desired  it  such  a  meeting-house  for  prayer  was 
established  —  the  "ten  men  of  leisure,"  as  they  were 
called,  who  were  capable  of  forming  a  congregation  or 
filling  the  public  offices.  In  Jerusalem  it  is  said  that 
there  were  no  less  than  four  hundred  and  eighty.  In 
the  smaller  towns  of  the  north  they  were  stately 
marble  edifices,  with  massive  pillars  and  cornices  richly 
sculptured,2  which  probably  answered  the  purpose  of 
the  Town-hall  as  well  as  the  church  of  the  district. 
Each  synagogue  accordingly  had  its  own  small  muni- 
cipal jurisdiction,  with  the  power  of  excommunication 
or  exclusion,  and  extending  to  the  right  of  inflicting 
lashes  on  the  bare  back  and  breast  of  the  offender.  A 
distinguished  teacher  of  his  time 3  was  obliged,  in  the 
short  space  of  a  few  years,  to  submit  to  this  ignomini- 
ous infliction  no  less  than  five  times.  Each  of  these 
little  municipalities  consisted  of  the  chief  official  with 
his  two  associates,  the  three  almoners,  the  leader  of 
the  public  worship,  the  interpreter,  and  the  beadle. 
These  formed  a  little  hierarchy  in  themselves,  but  hav- 
ing no  relation  to  that  of  the  sacerdotal  caste,  or  to 
the  order  of  scribes.  No  office  of  teaching  correspond- 
ing to  that  either  of  the  Jewish  Priesthood  or  Chris- 
tian clergy  existed  in  this  body.  The  instruction  was 
given  by  any  scholar  with  any  pretensions  who  pre- 
sented himself  for  the  occasion.  The  practice  of4 
combining  the  office  of  teachers  with  some  manual 
trade  was  a  constant  safeguard  against  their  sinking 
into  a  merely  sacerdotal  or  a  merely  literary  class. 

1  Sec  Ginsburg  on  the  Synagogue.  70,  74,  3G8;  also  Wilson  in  Recovery 
Kitto,  iii.  902-905.  of  Jerusalem,  342  el  seq. 

2  See  the  description  of  the  ruins  8  2  Cor.  xi.  25;  Schbttgen,  Hor 
at    Tell    Hum,    [rbid,   Kefr  Birim,  Heb.,  714. 

Mciron,    and    Kedesh    Naphtali,   in        4  Mishna,     Pirke     Aboth,     ii.    2 
Robinson's  Later  Biblical  Researches,     Munk's  Palestine,  521 ;  Dcutsch,  25. 


Lbct.  l.  the  synagogues.  517 

It  is  obvious  how  important  a  link  this  institution 
established  between  the  Jewish  settlements  throughout 
the  world.  At  Alexandria,  at  Rome,  at  Babylon,  there 
was  no  Temple.  But  in  every  one  of  those  cities,  and 
by  many  a  tank  or  riverside  in  Egypt,  Greece,  or  Italy, 
there  was  the  same  familiar  building,  the  same  inde- 
pendent organization,  the  same  house  for  the  mingled 
worship  and  business  of  every  Jewish  community.  And 
thus,  inasmuch  as  the  synagogue  existed  where  the 
Temple  was  unknown,  and  remained  when  the  Temple 
fell,  it  followed  that  from  its  order  and  worship,  and 
not  from  that  of  the  Temple,  were  copied,  if  not  in  all 
their  details,  yet  in  their  general  features,  the  govern- 
ment, the  institutions,  and  the  devotions  of  those  Chris- 
tian communities  which,  springing  directly  from  the 
Jewish,  were  in  the  first  instance  known  as  "  syna- 
gogues," or  "meeting-houses,"1  and  afterwards  by 
the  adoption  of  an  almost  identical  word,  "  Ecclesia," 
"  assembly-house." 

It  is  obvious  further  that  in  these  synagogues  of 
Palestine  was  the  safety-valve,  the  open  sphere,  the 
golden  opportunity  for  any  fresh  teaching  to  arise. 
Without  convulsion,  or  revolution,  or  disorder,  the  de- 
velopment of  a  new  idea,  the  expansion  of  an  old  idea, 
could  be  unfolded  within  the  existing  framework  by 
some  new-comer,  and  the  shock  would  fly  from  syna- 
gogue to  synagogue  throughout  the  country,  and,  it 
may  be,  throughout  the  empire.  In  those  brief  dis- 
courses which  were  there  delivered  we  have  the  origin 
of  the  "Homily,"  the  "Sermon,"  — that  is  the  serious 
"  conversation  "  — which  has  now  struck  so  deep  a  root 
m  the  Jewish,  the  Mussulman,  and  the  Christian  com- 

1  James  ii.  2.     Epiph.  (xxx.  18).     Professor  Lightfoot  on   the   Philip- 
150. 


518  HEROD.  Lect.  L 

muni  ties  that  we  can  hardly  imagine  them  to  have  ex- 
isted without  it.  It  began,  doubtless,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  the  expositions  of  Ezra,  but  it  was  in  this  later  age 
of  Judaism  that  it  assumed  its  predominance.  One 
example  of  such,  is  preserved  to  us  in  the  stirring  ap- 
peal, partly  philosophic,  partly  patriotic,  founded  on 
the  story  of  the  Seven  Martyrs  under  Antiochus,  and 
now  known  as  the  fourth  Book  of  Maccabees.  Others 
are  discernible  in  some  of  the  treatises  of  the  Alexan- 
drian Philo.  It  thus  became  possible  that  some  heaven- 
sent Teacher  might,  by  a  first  discourse,  thus  draw 
upon  himself  "the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn,  the 
"love  of  love,"  by  which  he  should  be  afterwards  fol- 
lowed even  to  the  end,  or  that  some  "  word  of  exhor- 
"  tat  ion "  from  a  wandering  stranger  might  drop  a 
spark  which  should  enkindle  a  slumbering  flame  that 
could  never  be  extinguished.1 

This  leads  us  to  the  consideration  of  the  religious 
condition  and  capabilities  of  the  general  population  of 
Palestine,  and  of  the  materials  on  which  any  new  in- 
fluence would  have  to  work,  and  in  the  midst  of  which 
it  must  grow  up. 

The  Nothing  is  more  difficult  than  to  detect  the 

Peasants,  popular  sentiment  of  a  nation  apart  from  its 
higher  culture  and  its  public  events.  Yet,  in  this  case 
it  is  not  impossible.  For  the  first  time  we  are  now 
entering  on  a  period  where  "  the  people  of  the  land," 2 
the  peasants  of  Palestine,  found  a  voice  in  the  litera- 
ture, and  took  a  part  in  the  struggles,  of  the  nation. 
In  the  provincial  towns  the  system  of  schools  had  kept 
alive  the  knowledge  of  the  sacred  books,  though  often 
of    another   class   than   those    studied   in    the    capital. 

1  Luke  iv.  21;  Acts  xiii.  14.  and  on  "  Education  "  in  Kitto's  Cy- 

*  Ginsburg    on    "the    Midrash  "     clopcedia,  i.  167,  731. 


Lect.  L.  GALILEE  519 

The  parables  and  riddles  with  which,  even  in  the  grave 
colleges,  the  teachers1  were  wont  to  startle  their 
drowsy  hearers  into  attention  were  yet  more  congenial 
amongst  the  rural  villagers.  Instead  of  the  tedious 
controversies  of  legal  casuistry2  which  agitated  the 
theologians  at  Jerusalem,  the  Prophets,  with  their 
bright  predictions,  were  studied  or  read  in  the  syna- 
gogues. Instead  of  the  Halacha?  or  "  the  authoritative 
"  rule  "  for  legal  action,  the  rustic  or  provincial  teach- 
ers threw  themselves  on  the  Hagada,  "  the  legendary," 
or  the  poetical  branch  of  the  Scriptures.  The  Talmud- 
ical  writers  never  mention  the  Hagadists,  the  Hagadists 
rarely  mention  the  Talmudists ;  but  not  the  less  truly 
did  they  exist  side  by  side. 

Almost  for  the  first  time  since  the  death  of  Zerub- 
babel  the  expectations  not  merely  of  a  Messenger,  of 
a  Prophet,  but  of  a  Personal  Deliverer  —  of  a  son  of 
the  long-lost  house  of  David  —  took  possession  of  the 
popular  mind.  New  prayers4  were  added  to  the  Jew- 
ish ritual,  for  the  reestablishment  of  the  royal  dy- 
nasty, and  for  the  restoration  of  the  national  jurisdic- 
tion. Even  the  Romans  had  heard  of  an  expectation 
that  some  conquering  king  would  rise  at  this  time  out 
of  Juda3a.5  It  was  natural  that  these  aspirations  should 
breed  a  fiercer  spirit,  and  burn  with  more  intense 
ardor,  in  particular  localities.  The  district  where  they 
can  be  most  distinctly  traced  even  through  the  dry 
narrative  of  Josephus  is  Galilee.  Not  more  ^ 
clearly  than  the  High  Priests  on  the  one  side 
\nd  the  Scribes  on  the  other  dominate  in  Jerusalem,  or 

1  Deutsch,  Remains,  44.  4  See  Ginsburg  on  tbe  Synagogues, 

2  Derenbourg,  161.  Kitto,  iii.  906,  907. 

»  Derenbourg,  350.     See  Milman's        5  Tacit.,  Hist.,  v.  13;  Suet.,Vesp.,4, 
Hist,  of  Jews,  iii.  42. 


520  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

the  monastic  Essenes  in  the  basin  of  the  Dead  Sea,  do 
"  the  Zealots,"  or  the  patriots,  of  the  coming  genera- 
tion, prevail  on  that  border-land  of  Jew  and  Gentile, 
where  the  hardy  and  secluded  habits  of  the  peasants 
and  foresters  kept  them  pure  from  the  influence  of  the 
controversies  and  corruptions  of  the  capital,  where  the 
precipitous  and  cavernous  glens  furnished  inaccessible 
retreats,  where  the  crowded  population  of  artisans  and 
fishermen  along  the  shores  of  the  Lake  of  Gennesareth 
teemed  with  concentrated  energy.  There  were  born 
and  bred  Hezekiah1  and  his  gallant  band  whom  Herod 
treated  as  robbers,  but  whose  mothers,  like  the  Rachel 
of  Bethlehem,  cried  for  vengeance  against  him  for  the 
shedding  of  the  innocent  blood  of  their  sons,  whom  the 
stern  Shemaiah  took  under  his  protection  in  the  Jew- 
ish Sanhedrin.  There  was  nurtured  his  son  Judas,  of 
Galilee,  whether  from  the  eastern  or  western  side  of 
the  Lake,  who,  in  the  same  cause,  "  calling  none  master 
"  save  God  alone,"  died  a  death  of  torture,  and  was  be- 
lieved to  be  enrolled  amongst  "  the  just  men  made  per- 
"  feet."  2  There  were,  still  continuing  the  same  heroic 
cause,  his  sons,  James  and  Simon,  who  suffered  for  their 
revolt3  on  the  cross.  In  the  craggy  sides  of  the  ro- 
mantic dell  of  Arbela,  as  it  descends  on  the  plain  of 
Gennesareth,  took  refuge  the  band,  whom  Herod  ex- 
tirpated 4  by  letting  down  his  soldiers  in  baskets  over 
the  cliff-side  and  kindling  fires  at  the  entrance  of  the 
caverns.  Robbers,  it  may  be,  but  perhaps,  like  the  Mac- 
cabaaan5  patriots  who  had  occupied  the  same  hiding- 

1  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  10,   1;  De-     292;  Josepbus,  Ant.,  xiv.   15,  4,  5; 
•enbourg,  261.  B.  J.,  i.  16,  2-5. 

a  Josephus,  Ant,  xviii.  1,  6.  5  Josephus,   Ant.,   xii.    11,    1;   1 

8  Josephus,  Ant.,  xx.  5,  2.  Mace.   ix.    2,   where  the   caves   are 

*  Robinson's  Researches,  Hi.  288-     called  Messaloth,  the   steps  as  of  a 
ladder. 


Lect.  L.  GALILEE.  521 

places  before,  and  the  troops  of  insurgents *  later,  they 
numbered  amongst  them  that  fine  old  man 2  who,  like 
the  mother  of  the  Maccabaaan  martyrs,  stood  at  the 
mouth  of  the  cave,  and,  as  the  suffocating  smoke  rolled 
in,  rather  than  submit  to  Herod,  whom  he  reproached 
with  his  Idumsean  descent,  slew  one  by  one  his  seven 
sons  and  their  mother,  and  then  flung  himself  over  the 
precipice,  to  the  horror  and  compassion  of  his  pur- 
suers. Of  this  same3  impassioned  and  devoted  race 
were  those  multitudes  of  Galilee  —  men,  women,  and 
children  —  who  adhered  to  their  leader  Josephus  with 
a  devotion  and  gratitude  vainly  sought  amongst  the 
dwellers  in  the  capital  and  its  neighborhood.  In  this 
population,  so  simple  in  its  creed,  so  uncorrupted  in  its 
manners,  so  fiery  in  its  zeal  —  in  those  borders  of  the 
ancient  Zebulon  and  Naphtali  that  had  once  "jeoparded 
"  their  lives  unto  the  death  "  against  the  host  of  Sisera 
—  in  that  country  lying  on  the  dim  twilight  of  Judaism 
and  heathenism,  whence  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  were 
confident  that  no  prophet  could  arise  —  where  alone, 
as  into  the  Boeotia  of  Palestine,  the  schools  of  Simeon 
the  son  of  Shetach  had  not  penetrated4  —  it  was  not 
altogether  beyond  expectation  that  a  new  cause  should 
be  proclaimed,  and  that,  if  it  did,  there  would  be  found 
among  those  Galilean  peasants  a  Simon,5  perchance 
(like  his  namesake  the  son  of  Judas  the  Gaulanite)  "  a 
"Zealot"  for  his  country's  independence,  or  another 
Simon,  rugged  as  a  "  Rock  " 6  of  his  own  Lake,  or  an- 
other James  counted  "Just,"7  like  the  founder  of  these 

1  Josephus,  Vita,  37.  5  Luke  vi.  15;  Josephus,  Ant.,  xx. 

B.  J.,  i.  16,  4.  5,  2. 

8  Josephus,  Vita,  42,  43,  50.  6  John  i.  42. 

4  Deutseh,  140.  7  Eus.,  H.  E.,  ii.    23;  Josephus, 

Ant.,  xx.  5,  2. 
66 


522  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

aspiring   patriots,    or   yet   another   whose   fiery  spirit 
made1  him  like  "a  Child  of  Thunder."2 

There  is  one  more  aspect  of  the  life  of  Palestine 
The  Roman  which  must  not  be  omitted,  though  it  includes 
mem.  a  wider  scope  than  any  yet  mentioned.  From 
the  time  that  the  envoys  of  Judas  Maccabaaus  signed 
the  treaty  in  the  Senate  House,  still  more  from  the 
time  that  Pompey  entered  the  Holy  of  Holies,  the  Ro- 
man power  continued  to  make  its  presence  more  and 
more  felt  through  every  corner  of  Syria.  The  Lake  of 
Gennesareth  became  studded  with  Italian  towns  and 
villas,  like  the  Lake  of  Como.  The  hills  of  Herodium 
and  Mach96rus  were  crested  with  Italian  towers  and 
walls  and  aqueducts,  as  if  from  the  heart  of  the  Apen- 
nines. The  collectors  of  the  imperial  taxes  and  cus- 
toms were  at  watch  in  every  provincial  town.  Herod 
was  regarded  both  by  Augustus  and  by  Agrippa  as  the 
second  man  in  the  Empire,  each  placing  him  next  to 
the  other.3  The  visible  marks  of  foreign  dominion, 
more  deeply  than  ever  before  impressed  on  the  face  of 
the  Holy  Land,  expressed  the  significant  fact,  that 
Palestine  and  its  inhabitants  had  insensibly  become 
merged  in  a  vaster,  deeper  system.  No  doubt,  the  ra- 
pacity of  the  Roman  officials  was  often  past  endurance. 
No  doubt,  the  zealots  of  Galilee,  and  even  of  Jerusalem, 
contended  repeatedly  against  the  influx  of  the  Western 
Empire.  The  golden  eagle,4  whose  overshadowing  wings 
Herod  had  placed  over  the  portal  of  the  Temple,  was 
indignantly  torn  down  by  the  band  of  gallant  youths, 
whose  leaders  expiated  their  heroism  at  the  burning 

i  Mark  iii.  17.  8  Josephus,  B.  /.,  i.  20,  4;  Ant., 

2  For    Galilee   at    this    time    see     xv.  10,  3. 
Neubauer's  Geographic des  Thalmuds,        *  Josephus,  Ant.,  xvii.  6,  2. 


Lect.  L.  THE  ROMAN  GOVERNMENT.  523 

stake.  But  the  sense  of  the  beneficent  influence  of  the 
Roman  sway  had  sunk  too  profoundly  into  the  national 
feeling  to  render  this  extreme  repulsion  the  general 
sentiment ;  and,  although  Josephus  cannot  be  taken  as 
a  type  of  his  countrymen,  yet  there  must  have  been 
a  wide-spread  loyalty  to  the  majesty  of  the  Roman 
State  to  have  made  it  possible  even  for  Vespasian  to 
claim,  or  for  Josephus  to  concede  to  him,1  the  character 
of  the  Anointed  Deliverer.  The  great2  name  of 
"  Caesar  "  was,  on  the  whole,  a  symbol,  not  of  persecu- 
tion or  tyranny,  but  of  protection  and  freedom.  The 
Roman  soldiers3  were,  in  the  eyes  of  the  Galilean  peas- 
ants, models  of  generosity  and  justice.  The  Greek 
language,4  adopted  by  the  Romans  as  their  means  of 
communication  with  the  natives,  received  a  new  im- 
pulse in  Palestine,  and,  whilst  still  leaving  the  native 
Aramaic  in  possession  of  the  hearts  of  the  people,  be- 
came henceforth  the  chief  vehicle 5  of  general  culture. 
It  was  the  language  which  was  compulsory  in  the 
schools,  and  in  which  the  histories  of  the  time  were 
written.  Even '  its  drama  penetrated  into  Jerusalem. 
The  story  of  Susanna  was  turned  into  a  tragedy  by 
Nicolas  of  Damascus,  and  probably  acted  in  the  splen- 
did theatre 6  decorated  with  the  trophies  of  Augustus. 
The  Roman  or  Grecian  customs  and  postures,  at  social 
meals,  superseded,  even  in  the  humblest  ranks,  the 
time-honored  usages  of  the  East. 

These  were  the  elements  from  which  a  new  nation,  a 

1  Josephus,  B.  J.,  i.  6,  5,  1.  side  by  Professor  Bbhl,  Forschungen 

i  Matt.  xxii.  21;  Acts  xxv.  11.  nach  einer '  Volksbibel   zur  Zeit  Jesu. 

Luke  vii.  2,  4,  9;  xxiii.  47.  For  the  joint  use  of   the  two  lan- 

*  Deutsch,  141.  guages,  see  Merivale,  History  of  the 

5  See  the  case  argued  on  one  side  Romans,  iii.  375. 

oy  Professor  Roberts  in  his  Discus-  6  Deutsch,    141;    Hausrath,    248, 

•tons  on  the  Gospels,  and  on  the  other  249;  Josephus,  Ant.,  xv.  8,  2. 


524  HEROD.  Lect.  L. 

new  Church,  a  new  Empire,  might  possibly  be  built  up 
Theexpec-   whenever  a  new  leader  should  appear.     And 
£S.°fthe  will  it  be  possible  for  such  a  leader  to  appear? 
We  have  witnessed  the  shining  ideal  of  a  mighty  future 
depicted  by  the   prophet  of  the  Captivity,1     We  have 
seen  the  narrowing  of  that  ideal  in  the  rigid  system 2 
of  Ezra  and  of  the  scribes.     We  have  seen  the  partial 
opening  of  the   Eastern  horizon  through  the  contact 
with  Babylon  and  Persia,  and  of  the  Western  horizon 
in  the  influence3  of  Alexander  and  the  Alexandrian  civ- 
ilization.    We  have  seen  the  reanimation  of  the  heroic 
and  loyal  spirit  of  the   nation  under  the  Maccabees.4 
We  have  seen  the  revival  of  religious  and  secular  mag- 
nificence, first  in  the  Royal  Pontificate  of   the  Asmo- 
neans,5  and  then  in  the  union  of  Western  and  Oriental 
splendor  on  the  throne  of  Herod.     We  have  heard  the 
faint  accents  of  a  generous  and  universal  theology  from 
the  lips  of  Hillel,  the  aspirations  after  a  lofty  purity  and 
a  simpler  worship  from  the  Essenes,  the  cry  of  the  in- 
dividual conscience  and  national  independence  in  Gal- 
ilee.    We  have  watched  the  increasing  intercommunion 
between  the  countrymen  of  David  and  those  of  Cicero. 
Shall  therearise  One  in  whom  this  long  history,  at  times 
so  strangely  vacant,  at  times  so  densely  crowded  with 
incidents,  shall  be  consummated — who  shall  be  above 
all  these  jarring  elements,  because   he   shall  have   an 
affinity  with  each  and  a  subjection  to  none  —  who  shall 
give   to  the   discord  of  his  own  age,  and  to  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  past,  and  to  the  hopes  of  the  future  a  note 
of  heavenly  harmony,  a  magic  touch  of  universal  sig- 
nificance, an  upward  tendency  of  eternal  progress  ? 

i  Lectures  XL.,  XLIL,  XLIII.  *  Lecture  XL  VIII. 

a  Lecture  XLIV.  5  Lecture  XLIX. 

a  Lectures  XLV.,  XLVL,  XLVII. 


Lect.  L.  THE  RISE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  525 

Full  of  instruction  as  the  previous  stages  of  that 
history  may  have  been,  they  can  never  equal  the  inter- 
est of  the  events  that  shall  fill  its  next  seventy  years. 
And  those  events  are  not  the  less  attractive  because 
they  are  overlooked  alike  by  the  Jewish  and  the  Gen- 
tile historians,  and  are  contained  only  in  the  impressive 
simplicity  of  fragmentary  records  which  the  authorities 
of  the  Jewish  Church  and  of  the  Roman  Empire  dis- 
dain to  mention.  We  do  not  venture  to  anticipate  the 
coming  time.  But  no  account  of  the  reign  of  Herod 
can  be  complete  which  does  not  tell  that  the  next 
generation  delighted  to  recount  how,  within  sight  of 
his  palace  and  sepulchre  on  the  high,  rocky  platform  of 
the  Herodium,  in  the  very  year  when  his  blood-stained 
career  was  drawing  to  an  end,  was  silently  The  Rise  of 
born  (to  use  no  other  terms  than  those  which  Chriatianity- 
almost  all,  of  every  creed  and  nation,  would  acknowl- 
edge) the  last  and  Greatest  Prophet  of  the  Jewish 
Church,  the  First  and  Greatest  Prophet  of  the  races  of 
the  future. 

The  Roman1  statesmen,  the  Grecian  philosophers, 
the  Jewish  rabbis  looked  for  nothing  beyond  the  im- 
mediate horizon  ;  but  the  Sibylline  mystics  at  Alex- 
andria, the  poets  at  Rome,  the  peasants  in  Syria,  were 
wound  up  to  the  expectation  of  "  some  beginning  of  a 
"new  order  of  the  ages,"  some  hero  "who  from 
"  Palestine  should  govern  the  habitable  world,"  some 
cause  in  which  "  the  East  should  once  more  wax 
"strong."2 

Such  an  epoch  was  at  hand,  but  unlike  anything 
that  either  Greek  or  Jew  of  that  time  had  conceived ; 

1  Merivale,  History  of  the  Romans,  2  Virgil,  Eclog.,  iv;  Tac,  Hist.,  v. 
i  538.  13  ;  Suet.,  Vesp.,  4;  Josephus,  B.  /., 

vi.  5,  1. 


526  HEROD.  Leot.  L. 

a  new  hero,  but  unlike  any  character  that  in  that  age 
either  Jew  or  Greek  expected. 

What  was  that  new  birth  of  time  ?  What  was  to  be 
the  remedy  for  the  superstition,  infidelity,  casuistry, 
ambition,  impurity,  misery  of  the  age?  Not  a  con- 
queror —  not  a  philosopher  —  not  a  Pharisee  —  not  a 
Sadducee — not  a  mere  wonder-working  magician  — 
not  an  ascetic  —  not  a  vast  hierarchical  organization  — 
not  a  philosophical  system  or  elaborate  creed  —  but  an 
innocent  Child,  an  humble  and  inquiring  Boy,  a  Man, 
"  who  knew  what  was  in  man;"  full  of  sorrows  yet 
full  also  of  enjoyment ;  gracious  to  the  weak,  stern  to 
the  insincere;  "who  went  about  doing  good,"  and 
"  who  spake  as  never  man  spake  " —  a  homely,  social, 
yet  solitary  Being,  in  whose  transcendent  goodness 
and  truthfulness  there  was  revealed  a  new  image  of 
the  Divine  nature,  a  new  idea  of  human  destiny  —  a 
Teacher,  apart  from  the  generation  from  which  He 
sprang,  yet  specially  suited  to  the  needs  of  that  gen- 
eration —  a  fulfilment  of  a  longing  expectation,  yet  a 
fulfilment  in  a  sense  the  reverse  of  that  which  was 
expected. 

The  world  was,  as  it  were,  taken  by  surprise.  All 
His  teaching  abounded  in  surprises.  But  His  own 
coming,  His  own  self,  was  the  greatest  surprise  of  all ; 
and  yet,  when  we  reflect  upon  it,  we  feel  as  if  we 
ought  not  to  have  looked  for  anything  else. 

It  was  the  arrival  of  an  event  which  was  but  imper- 
fectly understood  at  the  time,  which  has  been  but  im- 
perfectly understood  since ;  which  was  therefore  not 
exhausted  then,  and  is  not  exhausted  now.  The  fac- 
tious disputings  of  Pharisee  and  Sadducee,  the  wild 
fanaticism  of  the  Zealots,  the  eccentricities  of  the 
Essenes,  the  worldliness  of  the  Priests,  the  formalities 


Lect.  l.  the  rise  of  christiamty.  527 

of  the  Scribes,  the  cruelty,  the  profligacy,  the  domi- 
neering, hard-hearted  ambition  of  the  Roman  world, 
the  effete  rhetoric  of  the  Greek  world,  found  their 
proper  level  in  the  presence  of  an  influence  which  ran 
counter  to  them  all.  Not  immediately,  but  gradually, 
at  least  in  the  forms  then  worn,  all  these  things  died 
away  —  surviving,  indeed,  for  ages,  but  surviving  as 
things  long  ago  doomed  —  doomed  not  by  direct  attack 
or  contradictious  denial,  but  by  the  entrance  of  a 
larger  affection,  of  a  fresh  object,  of  a  grander  spirit. 
The  various  preexisting  elements  of  good,  even  if 
for  the  moment  they  received  a  shock  from  the  appari- 
tion of  this  new  power,  even  if  some  graces  died  to  re- 
vive no  more,  yet,  on  the  whole,  took  courage,  were 
reanimated  and  enriched.  The  ancient  world,  although 
sitting  in  the  cold  shade  of  death,  was  instinct  with  a 
latent  heat  and  light,  which  admitted  a  spiritual  revo- 
lution, such  as,  either  earlier  or  later,  would  have  been, 
humanly  speaking,  impossible.  In  the  Jewish  Church 
the  scattered  sayings  of  the  better  Sadducees  and  the 
better  Pharisees  were  waiting  to  be  rescued  from  their 
obscurity  and  vivified  by  a  new  purpose.  In  the  Gen- 
tile world  the  philosophy  of  Socrates  and  Plato  — 
diluted,  indeed,  and  distorted,  but  rendered  popular 
through  the  East  by  the  schools  of  Alexandria  —  was 
reaching  forward  to  some  higher  manifestation  of 
truth.  The  researches  of  Grecian  science,  the  majesty 
of  Roman  law,  though  the  coming  religion  long  re- 
fused to  admit  them,  and  was  by  them  long  disdained, 
were  ready  to  be  received  into  it,  and  at  length  in  a 
large  measure  were  assimilated  by  it.  The  unex- 
ampled peace  under  Augustus  Cresar,  the  unity  of  the 
civilized  world  under  his  sceptre,  gave  a  framework 
nto  which  a  new  faith  could  spread  without  hindrance 


528  THE   RISE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  Lect.  L. 

and  without  violence.  The  strong  and  growing  belief 
in  immortality,  the  intense  apprehension  of  the  burden 
of  evil,  needed  only  a  new  spirit  to  quicken  them  into 
a  higher  and  deeper  life.  If  ever  there  was  a  religion 
which  maintained  a  continuity  with  ancient  materials 
or  parallel  phenomena,  it  was  that  which  avowedly 
came  not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil,  the  glories  of  Juda- 
ism ;  not  to  exclude,  but  to  comprehend,  the  aspira- 
tions of  all  the  races  of  mankind. 

In  the  Book  of  Daniel,  which  has,  as  it  were,  been 
the  companion  of  this  whole  period,  succeeding  to  the 
wild  shapes  of  winged  lion,  and  ravenous  bear,  and 
living  leopard,  and  furious  monster,  followed  the  serene 
and  peaceful  vision  of  a  figure,  not  clothed  with  wings, 
or  armed  with  fierce  paws,  or  iron  teeth,  but  only  with 
the  gentle,  reasonable,  upward  human  countenance  — 
wrapped  in  a  veil  of  cloud,  and  receiving  the  pledge 
of  an  empire  which  should  be  indestructible,  because  it 
would  be  inward  and  moral,  not  external  or  physical. 
•  1  saw  in  the  night  visions,  and,  behold,  one  like  a  son 
"  of  man  came  with  the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  came  to 
"  the  Ancient  of  days,  and  they  brought  him  near  be- 
fore him.  And  there  was  given  to  him  dominion, 
■•  and  -lory,  and  a  kingdom,  that  all  peoples,  nations; 
"  and  languages  should  serve  him  :  his  dominion  is  an 
••  everlasting  dominion,  which  shall  not  pass  away,  and 
"his  kingdom,  that  which  shall  not  be  destroyed."1 
The  scene  conveys  the  same  moral  as  that  in  the 
vision2  of  Elijah  at  Horeb.  The  Eternal  was  not  in 
tin-  wind,  the  earthquake,  or  the  fire,  but  in  the  still 
'mall  voice  of  the  solitary  conscience.  The  Eternal 
,|l,!  with  tln>  Hon,  the  bear,  and  the  leopard,  but 
WI,M  the  moral  qualities  by  which,  amidst  all  his  mani- 

'  Dan.  viL  18,  11  (Heb.).  2  See  Lecture  XXX. 


Lect.  L.  THE  RISE   OF  CHRISTIANITY.  529 

fold  weaknesses,  the  man  is  raised  above  the  most 
striking  manifestations  of  the  fierceness  and  strength 
of  the  brute  creation.  That  vision,  as  it  first  appeared, 
was,  not  without  ground,  supposed  to  signify r  the  lofty 
yet  gentle  character  of  the  Maccabaean  hero  who,  as 
the  representative  of  the  Holy  People,  overbore  with 
his  scanty  and  imperfect  resources  the  efforts  of  the 
Syrian  oppressor.  But  in  the  interval  between  An- 
tiochus  and  Herod  it  had  taken  a  wider  range.  The 
same  expressions  had  been  used  in  the  Book  of  Enoch 
to  represent  the  Chosen  Deliverer,  who  should  judge 
the  whole  human  race,  and,  in  the  times  to  which  we 
are  approaching,  there  was  One  who  certainly  applied 
them  to  himself;  and  whose  empire  over  the  intellect 
and  affections  of  mankind  has  not  passed  away. 

This  in  prospect  is  the  epoch  to  which  the  course  of 
this  history  was  now  hastening.  There  have  been 
many  retrospects  of  it.  Perhaps,  some  new  conviction 
may  be  awakened,  some  old  objection  cleared  away,  if 
we  conclude  with  a  passage,  but  little  known,  from  a 
famous  writer  of  the  last  century,  who  saw  with  a  clear- 
ness of  insight,  which,  if  troubled  by  violent  and  un- 
worthy passions,  was  not  distorted  by  ecclesiastical  prej- 
udice. It  is  the  close  of  a  parable  or  dream,  in  which 
an  inquiring  wanderer  has  passed  through  the  various 
forms  of  ancient  religion.2 

"  The  inquirer,  perplexed  by  the  troubles  and  super- 
"  stitions  around  him,  suddenly  heard  a  voice  from  the 
"  sky  uttering  distinctly  these  words :  '  Behold  the  Son 
"  '  of  Man  :  let  the  heavens  be  silent  before  him  ;  let 

1  See  Lecture  XLVIII.  So  seau,  first  published  from  the  raanu- 
^phrem  Syrus  on  Dan.  vii.  13.  scripts  of   M.  Moultou,  in    1861,  by 

2  "  Morceau    Allegorique    sur   la     his  descendant  M.  Stockeisen  Moul- 
Revelation"     ((Euvres    et    Corre-     tou,  183-185). 

tpondances   Ine'dites   de  J.-J.   Rous- 
67 


530  THE   RISE   OF   CHRISTIANITY.  Lect.  L. 

"  •  the  earth  hear  his  voice.'  Then  lifting  up  his  eyes, 
u  he  beheld  on  the  altar,  around  which  the  idol-wor- 
"shippers  were  assembled,  a  Figure,  whose  aspect,  at 
••  once  impressive  and  sweet,  struck  him  with  aston- 
*■  ishment  and  awe.     His  dress  was  homely  and  like 

•  that  of  an  artisan;  but  his  expression  was  heavenly; 
"his  demeanor  modest,  and  grave  without  austerity. 
"  There  was  a  simplicity  in  it  that  amounted  to  grand - 
••  eurj  and  it  was  impossible  to  look  at  him  without 
"  feeling  penetrated  by  a  lively  and  a  delightful  emo- 
"  tion,  such  as  has  its  source  in  no  sentiment  known 
"  amongst  men.  '  0  my  children  ! '  he  said,  in  a  tone 
"  of  tenderness  which  reached  the  bottom  of  the  soul, 
" '  I  come  to  expiate  and  to  heal  your  errors.  Love 
" '  Him  who  loves  you,  and  know  Him  who  is  forever.' 
"  At  the  same  moment,  seizing  the  idol,  he  overthrew 
"  it  without  effort,  and  mounting  the  vacant  pedestal 
'•  without  agitation,  he  seemed  rather  to  take  his  own 
"  place  than  to  usurp  that  of  another.  The  people 
-•  were  seized  with  enthusiasm,  the  priests  were  irritated 
"  almost  to  madness.  Champion  of  a  Divine  morality, 
••  In-  drew  the  wrorld  after  him;  he  had  but  to  speak 
"the  word  and  his  enemies  were  no  more.  But  he, 
••  who  ciiinc  to  destroy  intolerance,  refrained  from  imi- 
■•  tating  it.  He  used  only  the  means  which  accorded 
••  witli  the  lessons  which  he  had  to  teach  and  the  func- 
tions which  he  had  to  perform;  and  the  people,  all 
••  whose  passions  are  hut  forms  of  madness,  became  less 
••  zealous  and  cared  not  to  defend  him  when  they  saw 

■  thai  he  would  not  attack.  He  continued  to  speak 
•Mill  as  sweetly  as  before;  he  portrayed  the  love  of 
'•  man  and  all   the  virtues  with  traits  so  touching,  and 

•  in  colors  so  attractive,  that,  with  the  exception  of  the 
1  ministers  of  the  Temple,  no  one  listened  to  him  with- 


Lect.  L.  THE   RISE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  531 

"  out  being  moved  and  without  loving  better  his  own 
"  duties  and  the  good  of  others.  His  speech  was  sim- 
"  pie  and  gracious,  and  yet  profound  and  sublime ; 
■'  without  stunning  the  ear,  he  nourished  the  soul ;  it 
"  was  milk  for  children  and  bread  for  men.  He  at- 
"  tached  the  strong  and  consoled  the  weak,  and  the 
"  most  variously  and  unequally  gifted  amongst  his  au- 
"  dience  found  something  always  at  their  own  level. 
"  He  spoke  not  in  a  pompous  tone,  but  his  discourses, 
"familiar  as  they  were,  sparkled  with  the  most  en- 
"  trancing  eloquence,  and  his  instructions  consisted  of 
"  apologues  and  of  conversations  full  of  justice  and  of 
"  depth.  Nothing  embarrassed  him  ;  the  most  captious 
"  questions  met  instantly  with  the  wisest  solutions.  It 
"  was  needed  only  to  hear  him  once  in  order  to  be  per- 
"  suaded  ;  it  was  felt  that  the  language  of  truth  cost 
"  him  nothing,  because  he  had  the  source  of  truth  in 
"  himself." 

What  Rosseau,  and  others  not  less  gifted  than  he, 
have  seen  by  the  intuition  of  genius,  humbler  students 
can  learn  by  the  sincere  endeavor  to  penetrate  beneath 
the  surface  of  events  and  beneath  the  letter  of  the  rec- 
ords which  cover  this  momentous  period.  There  may  be 
much  that  is  dark  and  fragmentary ;  much  that  needs 
explanation  or  that  defies  analysis ;  but  there  is  enough 
to  enable  us  to  discern,  amidst  the  shadows  of  the  re- 
mote past,  and  athwart  the  misunderstandings  of  later 
times,  the  sayings  and  doings  of  Him  who  is  still,  for 
All  mankind,  "  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life." 


APPENDICES. 


GENEALOGY  OF  THE  ASMONEANS. 
GENEALOGY  OF  THE  HIGH  PRIESTS. 
CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE. 


NOTE  ON  THE  NAME  OF  MACCABEE. 

(See  p.   338.) 

An  ingenious  argument  has  been  sustained  by  Dr.  Curtiss  (Leipsic)  to 
the  effect  that  the  original  spelling  of  the  word  is  Machdbee,  as  in  Jerome 
(Prolog.  GaleaL,  p.  xxviii.),  and  that,  if  so,  it  is  derived  from  chabah,  "  to 
"  extinguish,"  and  that  it  was  applied  to  Judas  as  "  the  extinguisher"  of 
the  Pagan  worship. 


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GENEALOGY   OF  THE    HIGH   PRIESTS. 


Joshua,  High  Priest,  b.  c.  536,  when  permission  was  given  for  the  return  of  Israel  from 

|  Captivity. 

lehoiakim,  b.  c.  499. 

Eliashib,  b.  c.  463. 

Jehoiada,  b.  c.  419. 

Johanan,  b.  c.  383. 

Jaddua,  b.  c.  351. 


Onias  I.,  b.  c.  321. 

1 

Simon  I.,  b.  o.  310.                   Eleazar,  291  b.  c. 

Manasseh,  B.  c.  276. 

Onias  II     b.  c.  250. 

Simon  II.,  the  Just,  219  B.  c. 
1 

Onias  III.,  B.  c.  199.              Jason,  or  Jesus  (Joshua), 
_    I                                                     b.  c.  175. 

Menelaus  (put  to  death  at 
Berea),  b.  c.  172. 

Onias  IV.,  b.  c.  160 
(High  Priest  in  Egypt). 

In  1G2,  Lysias,  the  governor  for  Antiochus,  appointed  Alcimus  High  Priest,  so  pass- 
Jig  out  of  the  direct  line  of  descent  (Jos.  Ant.  xii.  9,  7).     He  died  b.  c.  160. 

The  office  vacant  from  b.  c.  160  to  b.  c.  153. 

Jonathan.  Bon  of  Mattathias,  appointed  by  Alexander  Balas,  B.C.  153. 

Simon,  son  of  Mattathias,  n.  c.  143  —  elected  by  the  people. 

John  Ilyrcanus  I.,  son  of  Simon,  b.  c.  135. 

Aristobulus  I.,  or  Judas,  son  of  John  Ilyrcanus,  b.  c.  107. 

Alexander  Jannams,  or  Jonathan,  son  of  John  Ilyrcanus,  B.  C.  105. 

Ilyrcanus  II.,  son  of  Alexander  Jann.Teus,  n.  c.  79-69  ;   appointed  by  Pompey,  b.  c 
33-43. 

Aristobulus  II.,  s f  Alexander  Jannseus,  b.  c.  69-65. 

Antigonus,  or  Mattathias,  son  of  Aristobulus  II.,  b.  c.  43. 

Hananeel  "f  Babylon,  appointed  by  Herod,  b.  c.  37. 

Aristobultu  III.,  grandson  "f  Aristobulus  II.,  appointed  by  Herod,  b.  c.  35. 

Joshua,  the  son  of  I'habi,  B.  c.  35. 

Simon,  son  of  Hocthu«,  B.  c.  23. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


EVENTS  IN  THE   WEST  (EGYPT,   GREECE,   ROME),  PALES- 
TINE,  AND  ASIA. 


Events  in  Egypt,  Greece, 
and  Rome. 

Events  op  Palestine. 

Events  in  Asia. 

B.C. 

B.  C. 

606 

Captivity  of  Jehoiakim. 

B.  C. 

600 

Foundation  of  Mar- 
seilles    by     the 
Phocreans. 

599 

Thales  the  Milesian 

598 

Captivity  of  Jeconiah. 

594 

Legislation  of  Solon 

594 
588 

584 

Ezekiel  called  to  prophesy. 

Nebuchadnezzar    captures  Je- 
rusalem. 

carries    away    remainder  of 
Jews  and  Israelites. 

578 

ServiusTulliusand 
institution  of  Co- 
mitia  Centuriata. 

570 

Amasis,     King  of 
Egypt. 

570 

Book  of  Ezekiel. 

562 
561 

Death     of     Nebu- 
chadnezzar. 
Evil  Merodach. 

5G0 

Pisistratus            at 
Athens. 

560 

Cyrus   the   Persian 
King  of  Media. 

553 

"  Daniel's  vision  of  the  ram  and 
he  goat,"  Dan.   viii.     1-27. 
The    Evangelical      Prophet, 
Isa.  xl.-lxvi. 

559 
555 

Neriglissar  (?) 
Laborosoarchod  ( ?) 

Nabunid  (?)Bel- 

shazzar ( V) 

546 

Lydian  monarchy 
overthrown      by 

Cyrus. 

538 

Babylon  taken    by 

r.;:6 

Xenophanes        of 

536 

Cyrus      restores      the       Jews. 

536 

Cyrus. 
Cyrus  conqueror  of 

Elea. 

Jeshua,  High  Priest.    Zerub- 
babel.     Consecration  of  the 

Babylon. 

Altar. 

535 

Jews  commence  rebuilding  the 
Temple. 

»32 

Pythagoras. 

529 

Cambyses  (Achash- 

1 

verosh). 

538  CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE. 

Events  in  the  "West,  Palestine,  and  Asia — Continued. 


Bran  in  Kgvpt,  Greece, 

Events  op  Palestine. 

Events  in  Asia. 

a.nd  Hum;. 

B.C. 

IS.  v. 

B.C. 

rsimmfnilus,  King 
of  Egypt,    over- 
thrown by   Cam- 

bysts. 

521 
520 

Hagoai.    Zechariah. 

Building  of  Temple,  interrupted 
by  Samaritans,  is  resumed. 

522 

Smerdis  the  Magian 

516 

Completion  of  the  Temple. 

516 

Darius  I.  captures 
Babylon  (after 
usurpation  of 
Smerdis). 

510 

The    Regifuge    at 
Rome. 

600 

The  Ionic  revolt. 

404 

ssion    of 

to    Mons 
Sacer. 

494 

Jehoiakim,  High  Priest. 

490 

Battle  of  Marathon. 

4SG 

Revolt     of    Egypt 

from      1 
reconquered  484. 

485 

Xerxes  confirms   the  Jews   in 
their    privileges.       Story   of 
Esther. 

485 

Xerxes  (Achash- 
verosh). 

480 

["hermopylse:  Arte- 

misium,  Salamis. 

479 

Plataeaand  Biycale. 

477 
475 

[Death    of    Confu- 
cius.] 
[Death  of  Buddha] 

472 

^schylua  flourishes 

46G 

Victory  of    Cimon 
at  Eurymedon. 

463 

Eliashib,  High  Priest. 

465 

Artaxerxes  I.  (Ar- 
tashasht. ) 

162- 

Rt  volt  of  Inarut  in 

405 

;    ftuirus  is 
I,       B.    C. 

448.       / 

,  imyrtaus 
.  413. 

1 

4G1 

400 

Artaxerxes. 

450 

Ezra. 

488 

•  h'ncinnatns. 

466 

I Enophy- 
t.i.    Herodotus. 

451 

..  Laws  of 
the  XII.  Tables. 

415 

Nehemiah 

441 

Baripides. 

131 

Beginning  "f  Pelo- 
ponnesian  war. 

127 

\i isto]  banes. 

424 

Artaxerxes  II. 
(Sogdianus),  Da- 
rius II.  (Nothus.; 

CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE.  539 

Events  in  the  West,  Palestine,  and  Asia  —  Continued. 


Events  in  Egypt,  Greece. 
and  Rome. 


377- 
344 
376 
371 


485 


Close  of  Pelopon- 
nesianwar.  Saite 
dynasty  in  Egypt. 

Death  of  Socrates. 
Retreat  of  the 
Ten  Thousand. 

Mendesian  dynasty 
in  Egypt. 

Camillus  takes  Veii. 

Rome  taken  by  the 
Gauls. 

Peace  of  Antal- 
cidas. 

Birth  of  Aristotle. 


Sebennyte  Dynasty 

in  Egypt. 
Licinian  Rogations. 
Battle  of  Leuctra. 
Mantinea.      Death 

of  Epaminondas. 


Demosthenes. 

Egypt  again  a  Per- 
sian province. 

Death  of  Plato,  set. 

Battle  of  Chasronea. 
Philip  master  of 
Greece. 


Expedition  of  Alex- 
ander. Battles  of 
Granicus,  Issus, 
and  Arbela. 


Death  of  Alexan- 
der. Ptolemy, 
Viceroy  of  Egypt. 


Battle  of  Ipsus. 
Romans        subdue 
Samnites. 

Ptolemy  IT.  (Phil- 
adelphus).  The 
Septuagint  begun 


Events  of  Palestine. 


419   Jehoiada,  High  Priest.    Manas- 
seh  withdraws  to  Samaria. 


Malachi(?) 


Murder  of  Johanan,  the  High 
Priest. 


Jaddua,  High  Priest. 


Onias  I.,  High  Priest. 


Simon,  High  Priest. 


Eliezer,  High  Priest. 


Events  in  Asia. 


Artaxerxes      111. 
(Mnemon.) 


Artaxerxes      IV. 
(Ochus.) 


Arses. 


Darius  III.    (Codo- 
manus.) 


Battle  of  Arbela. 
Death  of  Alexander. 


Seleucus  I.  (Nica- 
tor)  begins  dy- 
nasty of  Seleu- 
cidte  at  Babylon 


540  CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE. 

Events  in  the  West,  Palestine,  and  Asia — Continued. 


Kvsnts  n  Sgtpt,  Greece 
and  Home. 


Achaean  League. 

Pyrrhus  defeated. 
First  Punic  War. 


Regulus. 
Ptolemy     TIL 

(Euergetes.) 


Agis,       King 
Sparta. 


Ptolemy  IV.,  Philo- 

Second  Punic  War. 
Hannibal. 


Philopoemen,  gene- 
ral    of    Achaean 

Battle  of  Metaurus 
Ptolemy  V.  ( fpiph- 

anes) 
Battle  of  Zama 


Battle     of    Cynos- 

cephalaj 
Battle  of  Magnesia 


Ptolemy  VII.  (Phi- 
lometor),  and 
Ptolemy  Euer- 
getet  )/.  (Pliys- 
con.)  Aristobu- 
lus  the  Teacher 


liattle  of  Pydna 


Events  op  Palestine. 


i-;r 


Manasseh,  High  Priest. 


Onias  II.,  High  Priest. 


Antiochus  the  Great  conqueio 
Palestine.  Simon  II.,  the 
Just,  High  Priest. 

Ptolemy  Philopator  comes  to 
Jerusalem. 


Onias  III.,  the  son  of   Sirach 

High  Priest. 
Antigonus  of  Socho. 


Jason    buys    High    Priesthood 

of      Antiochus       Epiphanes. 

"Prince  of  Judaae." 
Menelaus,    High    Priest.     An- 

tiocnus  devastates  Jerusalem. 
Antiochus     persecutes      Jews. 

Portress  built  on  Mt.  Acra. 

Probable  date  of  the  book  of 

Daniel.     Probable  date  of  the 

Psiiltcr  of  Solomon. 
Ma rr Ail i ias  the  Asmonean. 


Events  in  Asia. 


2M.; 


L'2i 


187 


175 


Antiochus  I.  (Soter) 


Antiochus    II. 
(Theos.) 

Foundation  of  the 
Parthian  empiro 
by  Arsaces  I. 


Seleucus  II.     (Cal- 
linicus.) 


Seleucus  III.     (Ce- 

raunus.) 
Antiochus  III.  (the 

Great.)   Battle  of 

Magnesia 


Seleucus  IV.  (Phi 
lopator  Heliodo 
rus.) 


Antiochus  IV. 
(Epiphanes). 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE.  541 

Events  in  the  West,  Palestine,  and   Asia  —  Continued. 


(65 


Third        Siby 
Book  ( V) 


160    Onlcts     IV.     High 
Priest  in  Egypt 


165 


l!U 


IG.'J 


1111 


160 


158 


153 


Judas  Maccab.eus.      Battles 

of  Beth-boron  and  Emmaus. 
Battle    of     Bethzur.       He    re- 
covers   Jerusalem.     Restora- 
tion    of    daily     worship     in 
Temple.    Feast  of  Dedication 
instituted.    Bethzur  fortified. 
He     conquers     Edomites    and 
Ammonites,  slays  Timotheus, 
and    relieves    "the    Jews    of 
Gilead. 
Jose  son   of    Jazer,   and    Jose" 

son  of  Johanan. 
Alcimus,  High  Priest. 
Demetrius      sends     Bacchides, 
then     Nicanor,    against    the 
Jews.     Jewish   alliance   with 
Parthia  (?)  and  Rome. 
Battle  of  Beth-horon.   Judas  de- 
feats and  kills  Nicanor;  Battle 
of  Eleasa  and  death  of  Judas. 
Jonathan,  brother  of  Judas,  is 
elected     captain     bv    Jews. 
Alcimus      dies;      Bacchides 
leaves  the  Jews  in  peace  for 
two  years. 
Bacchides    returns    to   Judaea. 
Jonathan  and   Simon   defeat 
him   at    siege    of    Bethbasi. 
Bacchides   makes  peace  and 
returns. 
Jonathan,  High  Priest. 


Death  of  Antiochus 
Lysias   and   Antio- 
chus   V.    (Eupa- 
tor.) 


Demetrius    I.   (So- 
ter.) 


146 


145 


Destruction 

Carthage        a 

Corinth. 
Plulemy  Physcon 


145 


111 


He  unsuccessfully  besieges  the    145 
fortress  at  Jerusalem. 


Demetrius  and  Tryphon  quarrel 
Jonathan  supports  Tryphon 
and  defeats  generals  ofDeme- 
trius;     but    is    treacherously 
murdered  by  Tryphon. 
43   Simon  Maccabajus^  High  Priest. 
He  declares  against  Tryphon, 
the  usurper  of  Syria.    "Deme- 
trius  makes   him  "Prince  of 
"  Judasa."     He  sends  an  em- 
I     bassy  to  Rome. 
142  I Simon    takes    the    fortress    of 
Acra. 


Alexander  Balas 
(usurper. ) 

Demetrius  II.  (Ni- 
cator)  lands  in 
Cilicia  to  recover 
the  kingdom  of 
his  father,  Deme- 
trius I. 


Tryphon  opposes 
Demetrius,  and 
brings  forward 
Antiochus,  son  of 


Tryphon  usurps 
throne  of  Syria 
(Babylon.) 


542  CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE. 

Bvmrra  ra  the  Wist.  Palestine,  and  Asia  —  Continued. 


r,  Greece, 
and  Rome. 


The  Gracchi. 


Cleopatra  and  Ptol- 
emy Lalhurus. 


Mariua  defeats 

Teutones  at 

Aquae  Sextise. 


Events  of  Palestinf 


110 


10'.) 


His  sovereignty  confirmed  by 
the  Jews. 


Murder  of  Simon.     John  Htb 
casus.     Book  of  Enoch  (?) 
Peace  made  with  Syria. 


John  Hyrcanus  makes  himself 
lendent  of  Syria;  de- 
stroys the  temple  on  Mt 
Genzim. 

He  conquers  the  Edomites. 

Renews  the  league  with  Rome. 


Events  in  Asia. 


1  :)8 


Joshua,     son     of      Perachiah ; 
Nittai  of  Arbela. 


Aristobulus     and     Antigonus, 

i  John  Hyrcanus,  attack 

Samaria,    and    defeat   Cyzi- 

ho  comi     to  its  relief. 

John  1 1  n  rcanus  master  of  Ju- 
daea, Samaria,  Galilee.  First 
mention  of  Pharisees  and 
Sadducees. 

Death  of  John  Hyrcanus. 
Aim-  rOBl  LOS,  who  calls  him- 
self King  of  Judaea. 

Aristobulus  conquers  Itursea. 
Murder  of  Antigonus  and 
death  of  Aristobulus.  Alex- 
ander .Ian.n.v.us.  First 
mention  of  the  Kssenes. 


laiin.iii-  captures  Gaza. 

lews  mutiny  against  Jannaeus. 
Fannaeus    subdues    Moab    and 
Gilead. 


Antiochus  Sidetes, 
brother  of  Deme- 
trius II. 


Campaigns  of  Si- 
detes and  Hyr- 
canus against 
Parthia;  Sidetes 
slain. 


Return  of  Deme- 
trius II.  (Nica- 
tor.) 

Alexander  Zebina, 
an  imposter,  set 
up  by  Ptolemy 
Physcon. 

Antiochus  Grypus, 
son  of  Demetrius, 
vanquishes  Ze- 
bina. 


\ntiochus  Cyzi- 
cenus,  son  of 
Sidetes,  makes 
.himself  master 
of  Syria. 


Antiochus  Eusebes. 
Demetrius  Eucerus. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE.  543 

Events  in  the  West,  Palestine,  and  Asia—  Continued. 


Events  in  Egypt,  Greece. 
and  Rome. 


Social  war  in  Italy. 
Death  of  Marius. 


Peace  between 

Sulla  and  Mithri- 
dates. 


Sulla,  Dictator. 

Various  Ptolemies 
Ptolemy  Auleles. 


Death  of  Sulla. 

Lucullus     goes    to 
Asia. 

Death  of  Sertorius. 


Spartacus  defeated 
and  slain  by 
Crassus. 

Consulship  of  Pom- 
pey  and  Crassus. 


Events  op  Palestine 


Cicero,  Consul ; 
conspiracy  of 
Catiline. 


First  Triumvirate. 
Caesar    begins    the 

subjugation       of 

Gaul. 


Jannaeus  is  defeated  by  Obodas, 
a  king  of  Arabia;  Hews  take 
the  opportunity  to  revolt. 

Jannaeus,  having  shut  the  rebels 
up  in  Bethome,  crucifies  800 
of  them,  and  ends  the  revolt 
after  six  years. 

Enlarges  his  kingdom. 


His  triumph  at  Jerusalem. 

Death  of  Jannaeus.  His  wife 
Alexandra  succeeds.  She 
makes  her  eldest  son  Hyk 
canus  High  Priest,  and  sup- 
ports the  party  of  the  Phari 
sees. 


Birth  of  Hillel. 


Simeon  the  son  of  Schetah,  and 
Judah  the  son  of  Tobai 
Birth  of  Herod  the  Great. 


Establishment  of  national 
cation. 


Aeistobulus,  younger  brother 
of  Hyrcanus,  seizes  the 
crown ;  Hyrcanus  opposes. 

Death  of  Onias  "  the  Charmer 


Their  claims  are  referred  to 
Pompey,  who  confirms  Hyr- 
canus on  the  throne.  Pompey 
takes  Jerusalem.  Judaea  con- 
fined to  its  narrowest  limits. 


Aristobulus  and  his  son  Alex- 
ander escape  from  the  Romans 
and  create  troubles  in  Judaea. 


Events  in  Asia. 


Antiochus     Diony- 
sius. 


Tigranes  the  Arme- 
nian, monarch  of 
Syria  till  69. 


War  between  Lu- 
cullus and  Tigra- 
nes. Lucullus 
takes  Tigrauo- 
certa. 


Pompey  supersedes 
Lucullus,  allies 
himself  with 

Phraates  of  Par- 
thia,  and  forces 
Tigranes  to 

peace. 


.-,11  CHKOXOLOGICAL   TABLE. 

Events  in'  the  West,  Palestine,  and  Asia  —  Continued. 


Stents  is  Egypt,  Greece, 
and  Home. 


'Meeting  of  Trium- 
virate; break-up 
of  Senatorial 
party. 


Events  of  Palestine. 


Pompey 

sul. 


Con- 


'  ,'eopatra, 
of  Egypt. 
The    Wisdom   of 
in  (?) 


Rubicon. 
Battle  of  Pharsalia. 
drine  war 

: 

(,'leopatra 
of  Egypt 

in  47. 


Battle  of  Thapsus. 

Triumvi- 
Battlc  of  Philippi. 


Virgil 
Varius. 


They  are  put  down  by  the 
Proconsul,  A.  Gabinius.  Ju- 
daea divided  into  live  parts. 


plunders  the  Temple. 


f  Aristobulus  and  Alex 
ander. 


Antipater,  father  of  Herod  the 
( ,r  at,  i-  made  Procurator  of 
Judaea  Id-  makes  Herod 
Governor  of  Galilee.  Trial 
oi  I  [erod  before  the  Sanhe 
driin,  now  first  mentioned. 
Shemaiab  and  Abtalion. 


Antipater    poisoned    by    Mel 
elms  ;   his    sons    l'hasael  and 
Herod  avenge  him. 
I  [erod  \  ancjuishes  Antigonus, 

i  Axistobulus  II. 

Parthians     master    of     Lesser 

1   rusalem 

slay  Phasael,  make  II\  nanus 

V.NTIG 

onus    .mi     throne    oi    Ji  ru 
salem.   Herod  flees  to  Rome 
where   he   is   made    I 
Judma. 


Events  in  Asia. 


Orodes  I.,  King  of 
Parthia.  Pacorus. 
Disastrous  expe- 
dition of  Crassii3 
into  Parthia ; 
capture  of  the 
Roman  stand- 
ards. 

Cassius,  quaestor  of 
Crassus,  defeats 
Parthians       who 


Parthians  besiege 
Proconsul  Bib- 
ulus  in  Antioch 


Vcntidius  drives 
the  Parthians  <ut 
;f  Svria. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE.  545 

Events  in  the  West,  Palestine,  axd  Asia.—  Continued. 


Events  in  Egtpt,  Greece 
and  Home. 


37   ,  Agrippa        crosses 
Rhine. 


Events  of  Palestine. 


31    Battle  of  Actium. 
Death  of  Cleopatra 


Temple    of    Janus 
closed. 


Virgil  writes 

iEneid.  Horace 
published  first 
three  books  of 
Odes. 


Death  of  Virgil. 


Herod  marries  Mariamne,  and 
presses  the  siege  of  Jerusalem, 
aided  by  Sosius,  Governor  of 
Syria. 

Herod  captures  Jerusalem  and 
establishes  himself  as  Kin<r 
of  Judsea.  Death  of  Antic" 
onus. 

Arrival  of  Hillel  at.  Jerusalem. 


Herod  makes  Aristobulus  III., 

brother  of  Mariamne,  High 
Priest,  and  afterwards  mur- 
ders him. 

Hillel  and  Shammai. 

Herod,  by  order  of  Antonv, 
makes  war  on  Malchus,  king 
of  Arabia  Petraea  :  brings  him 
to  terms  the  following  year. 

Herod  makes  peace  with  Octa 

vian. 
Execution  of  Mariamne. 

Execution  of  Alexandra. 

Herod  rebuilds  Samaria  and 
calls  it  Sebaste.  Relieves  the 
pressure  of  a  famine  in  Judrca. 


Events  in  Asia 


Death     of    Orodes 
of  Parthia. 

Phraates,  his  son, 
succeeds.  Un- 
successful expe- 
dition of  Antony 
against  Parthia." 


•23 


Herod  begins  to  build  Caasarea. 
Receives  from  Augustus  Tra- 
chonitis,  Auranitis,  and 
Batanaaa. 


Herod,  having  spent  two  vears 
in  collecting  materials,  "pulls 
down  the  old  temple  at  Jeru- 
salem and  begins  a  new  one. 

He  marries  his  sons  bv  Mari- 
amne, Alexander  to  Glaphvra 
of  Cappadocia,  Aristobulus 
to  Salome's  daughter,  Bere- 
nice. 


Phraates  is  expelled 
by  the  Parthians ; 
but  is  restored 
by  the  Scythians 
and  gains  "friend 
ship  of  Augustus. 


Parthians  restore 
the  Roman  stan- 
dards. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE, 
ra  i\  the  West,  Palestine,  and  Asia.  —  Continued. 


Bra 

ts  in  Egypt,  Greece, 

EVENTS  op  Palestine. 

AND   KOHE. 

D.  C. 

1$  c. 

14 

Obtains  from  Agrippa  a  con- 
firmation of  the  privileges 
granted  to  the  .lews. 

13 

Breach  between  Herod  and  the 
sons  of  Mariamne. 

11 

Drusus      on       the 

11 

He  accuses  them  before  Augus- 

Rhine :    Tiberius 

tus,  who  brings  about  a  rec- 

on the  Danube. 

onciliation.  Herod  names 
Antipater  as  his  heir. 

10 

Herod  completes  the  building 
of  Ca?sarea.  Builds  the  tower 
of  Phasael  at  Jerusalem. 

9 

Fresh  quarrel  between  Herod 
and  sons  of  Mariamne. 

8 

Augustus     accepts 
Empire     a 
third  time. 

G 

Herod,  having  leave  from  Au- 
gustus  to  proceed  against  the 
Bons  of  Mariamne,  has  them 

strangled. 

5 

Birth  of  JESUS  CHRIST. 

4 

Death  of  Herod. 

y 

Death  of  Hillel. 

Events  in  Asia. 


INDEX. 


A.bednego,  25,  42. 

Abomination  of  Desolation,  330. 

Abtalion,  465. 

Acra,  388,  404. 

Adonai,  introduction  of  name,  180. 

Agatharchides,  272. 

Ahasuerus,  193. 

Alcimus,  353,  356,  395. 

Alexander,  261  ;  at  Jerusalem,  264  ; 
his  place  in  religious  history,  267  : 
his  funeral,  269. 

Alexander  Jannseus,  410,  429,  431. 

Alexandra,  411,  431. 

Alexandria,  274,  284,  304 ;  Jewish  set- 
tlement in,  279. 

Almsgiving,  45. 

Altar,  the,  104. 

Augels,  doctrine  of,  175,  182. 

Antigonus  of  Socho,  318. 

Antioch,  317,  321. 

Antiochus  the  Great,  317- 

Antiochus    Epiphanes,    320,  326,   392, 

352. 
Apocalypse  on  Babylon,  71. 
Apocrypha,  291 ;  meaning  of  word,  293; 

use  of,  294. 
Arak  el  Emir,  275. 
Aristeas,  285. 
Aristobulus    I.,   410. 
Aristobulus   II.,  445. 
Aristobulus  111.,  472. 
Aristobulus;  the  Philosopher,  309,  446. 
Aristotle,  252,  272,  290,  304. 
Asmodeus,  207. 
Asmoneau  family,  337. 

Babylon,  its  situation,  4  ;  grandeur,  5  ; 
social  condition,  10;  commerce,  12; 
rivers,  14;  customs,  47,  318;  idols, 
35,  67  ;  capture,  64  ;  ruin,  70 ;  pres- 
ent state,  73  ;  settlement  of  Jews  in, 
94  ;  Alexander  at,  263. 

Bagoses,  190. 

Ban  us,  513. 

Baruch,  19,  54  ;  Book  of,  23,  24,  36. 

Bel,  Temple  of,  8,  36  ;  its  fate,  67. 


Belshazzar,  60,  80  ;  his   feast,  61  ;   his 

fall,  64,  68. 
Benedicite,  37. 
Beth-horon,  342,  357. 
Beth-zur,  344,  349,  353,  404. 
Bishop,  origin  of  word,  134. 
Buddha,  211. 
Buuyan,  295. 

Ctesarca,  483. 

Canon   under  Nehemiah,    154  ;    under 

Judas  Maccabams,  377. 
Captivity,  the  words  for,  27. 
Chaldtean  language,  47. 
Chasidim,  319,  322,  364,  365. 
China,  209. 
Chittim,  213. 
Christianity,  rise  of,  525. 
Chronicles,  Book  of,  273. 
Classical  History,  beginning  of,  52. 
Confucius,  210. 
Crassus,  466. 
Cyrene,  280. 
Cyrus,  58  ;    his  historical  position,  59 ; 

his  decree,  90. 

Daniel,    26,    40,    41,    63,  64,  261,  270  ; 

visions   of,  48,  49,  76 ;  Book  of,  77- 

81,  261,  266,  335. 
Darius  Hystaspes,  109. 
Darius  the  Mede,  40,  42,  68,  80. 
Dedication  of  Temple,  344,  388. 
Delphi,  226. 

Devil,  doctrine  of,  182,  206. 
"Dispersion,  The,"  196. 
Dura,  plain  of,  41. 

Ecclesia,  the  word,  134. 

Ecclesiastcs,  179,  186. 

Ecclesiasticus,  277,  297,  371. 

Edom,  100. 

Eleasa,  battle  of,  361. 

Eleazar,  the  Asmonean,  240,  343,  354, 

Eleazar,  the  Martyr,  332. 

Elephants,  353,  354. 

Eniiuaus,  battle  of,  342,  343. 


548 


INDEX. 


Enoch.  Book  of,  414-418. 
124,428,510. 

,192;   name   of,   195, 
!.  200,  201. 
al  Prophet,  19,  08,  42,46,  49, 
76,  87,  97,  109. 
Evil  Merodach,  24. 
Exiles,  condition  of,  21 ;  sufferings  of,  28. 

Ezra,  Book  of,  124. 

K/r;i.  127  ;  his  journey,  128  ;  his  career, 
129,    i.  with  Nehemiah, 

14-1  ;  traditions  of,  150. 

Gadara,  453. 
Galilee,  100,  4G3,  519. 
i,  148. 

271. 
Gehenna,  417. 
( lerasa,  271. 

.  influence  of,  50,  213,  323. 
i  rymnastic  games,  324. 

Haggai,  111. 

grapha,  379. 
[Iandel'fl    Messiah,   87  ;    Esther,   201  ; 

Judas  Maccabseus,  370. 
Bare,  in  Septuagint,  290. 

i,  351. 
II  icatseua  of  Abdera,  272. 

,281. 
Herod,  rise  of,  457;  death,  479;   char- 
.   182  ;  public  works,  483. 
mi.  168,  480,  481. 
Hezckiah,  Samaritan  High  Priest,  265, 

284. 
Hillel,  499-508 
Hippos,  271. 

Hyrcanus  I  .  109,  126,  -127. 
II  ,  453,  463. 
i,  I  hi  5on  of  Tobiah,  274. 

[dumsea  (Bee  Edom). 
Immortality,  belief  in,  252,  308,  371. 
India,  211. 

Isaiah,    the    Second    (see    Evangelical 
Prophet). 

Jaddua, 

•  '•  r. ■in-,  315. 
Jehoiacbin,  23. 

i.  loss  of  the  name,  1st. 
Jeremiah,  19,  54  ;  apparition  of,  358. 
Jericho,  1 17. 

f,  101. 

John  the  Bapti  t,  B8,  177 
.  70. 
Jonathan  the  Asmonean,  340,  350  396  : 
hit  death,  400. 


Joseph,  the  son  of  Joazar,  394. 
Jn~ej.li,  the  son  of  Tobiah.  274. 
Joshua,  the  High  Priest,  93,  114. 
Joshua,  son  of  Peraehiah,  425. 
Judas  Maccabseus,  'J70 ;   his  character, 

343,  355,  391,  362  ;   his  death,  362. 
Judith,  Book  of,  413. 
Jupiter     Olympiua,    329  ;    Capitoliuus, 

329. 

Kingdom  of  Heaven,  76. 
Kings,  Book  of,  21. 

Law,  The,  158. 
Leontopolis,  280. 
Lucifer,  69. 

Maccabee,  name  of,  337,  340. 
Malachi.  173. 
Marianne',  475,  483. 
Mattathias  the  Asmonean,  338. 
Mene,  Mene,  Tekel,  Upharsin,  64. 
Menelaus,  325,  326,  328. 
Meshach,  25,  39. 
Messenger,  the  idea  of,  175. 
Messiah,  524. 

Mixed  Marriages,  129,  135. 
Mizpah,  265,  342. 
Modin,  338,  402. 

Nabonadius,  60. 

Nebuchadnezzar,  15. 

Nehemiah,  Book  of,  123. 

Nehemiah,    122  ;    meeting   wit.i    Ezra, 

143;    reforms,    145;    traditions,   150; 

his  canon,  155. 
Nethinim,  94. 
Nicanor,  342,  355,  356,  396;   his  death. 

360. 
Nicolas  of  Damascus,  458,  461. 
Nile,  Mesopotamian,  13. 
Nittai  of  Arbela,  425. 

Onias  of  Leontopolis,  280,  325,  397 
( Inias  the  ( Ihnrmer,  438. 

the  High  Priest,  320,  325. 

Oral  Tradition,  422. 
Orpheus,  311. 

Paneas,  272. 

Patriotism,  369. 

Peasants,  518. 

Persecution,  332, 

Persians,  their  descent  on  Babylon,  55  ; 

their  character,  64;  their  name,  64  ; 

their  influence,  190,  191,  206. 
Pharisees,  421,  426,  433. 
Pharos,  289,  291. 
Philadelphia,    in    Palestine,    271  ;      in 

America,  6 
Philo,  313. 
Plato,  252. 


INDEX. 


549 


Polytheism,  rejection  of,  41  ;  establish- 
ment of,  330. 

Pompey,  443  ;  visit  to  Jerusalem,  448  ; 
Temple,  450;  triumph,  454. 

Popilius  Lreuas,  392. 

Prayer,  43  ;  introduction  of,  for  the 
dead,  375.      ' 

Priesthood,  325,  393,  494. 

Primitive  History,  close  of,  51. 

Psalms,  cxxxvii."  28  ;  cii.,  29,  85  ;  cxxx., 
29  ;  cxxvi.,  cxxxiv.,  xcvi.,  xcvii., 
xcviii.,  xcix.,  86;  Ixxxix.,  126;  cxix., 
160  ;  lxxiv.  and  lxxix.,  334. 

Psalter  of  Solomon,  335. 

Ptolemais,  271. 

Ptolemies,  269,  290. 

Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  272. 

Ptolemy  Philopator,  275. 

Purim,'l96,  198. 

Rabbis.  497. 
Rhaziz,  357. 

Rome,  389  ;  treatv  with,  390  ,  influence 
of,  522. 

Sabbath,  327,  330,  339. 

Sacrifices,  494. 

Salathiel,  25,  93. 

Samaria,  454,  483. 

Samaritans.    108,    148,    159,    265,    267, 

279,  284. 
Sanhcdrin,  496. 
Satan,  doctrine  of,  182,  206. 
Scribes,  157,  162. 
Seleucus  I.,  317. 
Seleucus  IV.,  319. 
Septuagint,  284-298. 
Shadraeh,  25,  39. 
Shammai,  501,  509. 


Shemiah,  465. 

Sibyls,  312. 

Simon  the  Asmonean,  340,  401. 

Simon  the  Just,  276. 

Simon  the  son  of  Shetach,  431,  435. 

Sirach,  son  of,  278,  296. 

Socrates,- 218-256  ;    his    teaching,   229, 

254  ;   his   death,   241  ;   his    religious 

character,  243-252. 
Spiritual  religion,  42. 
Susa,  136 

Susanna,  24,  39,  523. 
Synagogue,  the  Great,  165. 
Synagogues,  167,  515. 

Tabernacles,  Feast  of,  105,  144,  348, 
429. 

Targuinists,  161. 

Temple  of  Herod,  486,  491. 

Temple  of  Zerubbabel,  104,  117  ;  de- 
scription of,  117;  dedication,  119. 

Tobiah  the  Ammonite,  147. 

Tobiah,  the  sons  of,  274. 

Tobit,  Book  of,  45. 

Tyre,  53,  73,  264,  324. 

West,  influence  of  the,  49,  214. 
Wisdom,  Rook  of,  304. 
Wisdom,  idea  of,  305. 
Woodcarriers,  Festival  of,  146. 

Xerxes,  193,  194. 

Zechariah,  110,  113. 
Zedckiah,  48. 

Zerubbabel,  25,  114,  115,  125,  204. 
Zion,  name  of,  383. 

Zoroaster,  importance,  203  ;  revival, 
205;  connection  with  Judaism,  206. 


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